‘We’ll return her safely, I promise.’
‘But you, you, Mr Harte,’ she insisted. ‘You’ll make sure she’s okay?’
It was evident that Connie had no idea her friend had decided against him. ‘I’ll do all I can,’ he said a trifle grimly, ‘but you should know that Daisy and I are not on the best of terms.’
The girl gave him a startled look. ‘But how come? Last time I spoke to her she was so happy, over the moon. And that was because of you.’
‘I wish she was still over the moon. But something happened to change her mind, though I’ve no idea what.’
Connie stopped her pacing and looked thoughtful. ‘Willa happened,’ she said flatly.
‘What or who is Willa?’ It was his turn to look puzzled.
‘She isn’t—not any more, I’m afraid. She died last week and today was her funeral.’
‘Daisy said she’d been to a funeral.’ He was still puzzled. ‘But how does that affect anything?’
‘She thought it was her fault—that Willa died,’ Connie said in the quietest of voices. ‘You see, Willa committed suicide and Daisy hasn’t forgiven herself for that.’
He felt he was grappling through a dark fog. ‘But why? I don’t understand.’
‘Neither do I, Grayson. I hope you don’t mind me calling you Grayson. That’s how I always think of you. I don’t understand it at all, but Daisy seems to have got it into her head that if she’d paid Willa more attention, the girl would never have hung herself.’
‘And what has that to do with me, with us?’ The fog had just become impenetrable.
‘You were the reason she didn’t look after Willa. You distracted her.’ His expression was one of bewilderment, and Connie grasped his hand. ‘I know, it sounds utterly crazy, but I think Daisy has been slightly crazy these last few weeks. First of all, that husband of hers—that Gerald—and then the man who was following her. Then seeing you again and … well, you know.’
He did know or he was beginning to. It was crazy, as her friend had said, but he could see how the suicide might have pushed Daisy that little bit too far. Her resources were exhausted and their future together had become the payment. He held out his hand again. ‘You’ve been a great help, Connie. Thank you.’
‘I’m not sure how,’ she confessed, ‘but bring her back safely, please.’
CHAPTER 15
Sweetman had slept surprisingly well and woken that morning newly energised. Just as well, he’d thought, he’d be sleeping rough tonight. In a few hours’ time the hateful room in the hateful house would be no more. He stuffed his few possessions into a small suitcase—nothing of his must be found in the debris—and set the timer for several hours ahead. That would ensure he was miles away when the bomb went off. He would take the suitcase to Charing Cross and leave it in the Left Luggage. If by any chance he survived tomorrow’s bloodbath, he would collect it and make his way to the Kent coast within the hour. A French fishing boat under German orders would be waiting for him. There was just one more thing he had to do. Find the nurse. She couldn’t know what had happened, since her fellow spy had had no time to alert her before he died. But Sweetman couldn’t be sure just how much she did know, and it was possible that the two of them had an arrangement to contact each other daily, and when Minns stayed silent, she would decide to raise the alarm. He should have dealt with her before, that much was clear. He’d allowed things to run on too long, allowed her and her confederate upstairs a freedom they didn’t deserve. And look what had happened. He would sort out this mess, but he couldn’t afford another botch. He had to have a clear run for tomorrow’s meeting and she was the only obstacle left. She was an uncertain commodity and that was what he hated.
Early morning had promised well, but when he stole out of the front door of Ellen Street for the last time, the sun had disappeared and the wind was raw. He turned up his coat collar and pulled down the black trilby that worked so well to disguise his features. He would walk to Barts and wait for her to finish her shift. Hopefully, she would leave the hospital alone. But when he’d waited on the pavement opposite for some time, his quarry appeared with a gaggle of fellow nurses. All were in uniform, their deep blue capes a sombre gathering beneath the dark sky. He followed them road by road, keeping a careful distance, until finally they entered a church. St Anne’s, he noticed. Lingering in the porch, he heard the beginnings of a funeral service and retreated to the graveyard. A short distance away, another party of mourners was gathered beside an open grave, and he sauntered casually towards them and took up a position at the edge of the group. No one spoke to him, no one even noticed him. That was the good thing about English funerals, he thought. The people who attended came from all locations and all walks of life. Many were complete strangers to each other and hardly anyone ever spoke.
His satisfaction was short-lived. He realised too late that he’d made a mistake in staying in the cemetery. He was far too conspicuous. The church service had been briefer than he’d expected, the committal proceedings even briefer, and, quite suddenly, the bustle of nurses were following on the heels of the group he’d adopted. He’d been caught out. He should have hung back, pretended to tie his shoelace or something equally commonplace, but instead had found himself walking past the woman he was hunting. She’d looked at him hard. He’d pulled the trilby over his face as far as he dared, but she’d known him, he was sure. That was an added reason, if he needed one, to eliminate the threat she posed. There were still twenty-four hours to go before Patel’s meeting and she was a danger. He hadn’t much hope of surviving tomorrow, but he was determined that his plan would endure, determined he’d scupper any possibility that India would enter the war on Britain’s side.
He had to get to her before she had the chance to speak. She’d recognised him, possibly as the man who’d been following her, maybe even the man who’d pushed her at Baker Street. Neither possibility would make him lose sleep. But if she realised he’d been the man driving the kidnap car, that could sink him. She would tell the SIS and they would be on to him in a flash. They must already be highly suspicious, but so far all they had was an unknown threat to Patel and no idea where the threat came from. But she could furnish them with a detailed description, and in hours he would be the object of a manhunt. If he knew anything about the SIS, they would find him. The evidence against him was flimsy. It was only her word, her description, that implicated him in the kidnapping, but once they started digging, they would trace him back to Ellen Street and find what was left of the dead men. He would be detained for murder. The bomb might confuse the police, but not the SIS. He would be locked up and his plan wrecked, his mission failed.
He needed to get her alone. He would walk back to the hospital, keeping well to the rear of the group, and hope for a chance to separate her from her friends. But he lost sight of the girls as he negotiated a series of twists and turns in the road and, when he caught up with them again, he could see at once that she was no longer with them. Had she for some reason run ahead to the hospital? He veered off the main route and turned into a back street, then into the next, racing through one road after another, trying to get ahead. If she’d returned before her friends, someone at the hospital would notice. He’d spent time familiarising himself with Barts, and early on had discovered the main ward she worked on. At the front entrance, a postman was delivering packages and the duty porter was temporarily distracted while he signed for them. Sweetman skulked past and dashed for the stairs. At the door of Daisy’s ward, he collided with a nurse and her trolley.
‘I’m so sorry,’ he said, sweeping off his hat in an extravagant gesture.
She looked at him distrustfully. ‘Can I help you? You do know that visiting time isn’t until four this afternoon.’
‘I’m so sorry,’ he said again. ‘I hadn’t realised. I’ll come back later. But I wonder, nurse—a personal matter only—do you happen to know if any of your colleagues are back from the funeral?’
She looked even mor
e distrustful. ‘No, they’re not, Mr …?’
‘So sorry to have bothered you,’ he said, stuffing his hat back on his head and jumping down the stairs two at a time. He felt the nurse’s disapproving eyes watching him, but even if she were to raise the alarm, he would be long gone.
If the girl was not at the hospital, then maybe she’d returned to the Nurses’ Home. It would be unusual, he thought, but then his knowledge of hospital routine was sparse. He hurried towards Charterhouse Square and was fortunate to meet one of its inmates coming down the front steps. Another nurse and another potential source of information.
‘Is Nurse Blenkinsop in?’ he asked, startling himself with the stupid English name that had come out of nowhere. He must be in a higher state of tension than he’d realised.
She looked bewildered. ‘I don’t believe we have a Blenkinsop.’
‘I’m sure she lives here,’ he persisted. ‘Could you go and see?’ He intended to creep in behind her and scour the building for himself.
But she closed the door with a firm thud. ‘You must be mistaken. In any case, the only nurses here are sleeping and after twelve hours of night duty, I think they deserve to, don’t you?’ And, with a saucy smile, she walked off down the road.
The woman he sought hadn’t been on night duty. She wouldn’t be sleeping. She’d been at that accursed funeral, so where had she vanished to? Then he knew. She’d recognised him, hadn’t she, so of course she’d gone to tell her fellow spy—gone to Ellen Street. Except there was no longer a house to visit and no longer a spy to tell. His heart raced with excitement. He knew he’d find her there. First, though, he needed to steal a car. That shouldn’t prove a problem. People were so careless with their property, particularly in wartime.
In half an hour, he had parked around the corner from Ellen Street and was walking slowly towards the damaged building. It was an incredible sight. To cause such chaos, and with such a small bomb. He’d seen an ambulance a few streets away. It must have been on its way to the morgue, though post-mortems wouldn’t be done today and there would be no identification for a while. He was safe from that. But not from her. He’d been right, she was here. She’d come straight to her contact and now he was no more, she would go straight to the SIS at Baker Street.
He took shelter behind a large van parked at the bottom of the road. A red-haired man he’d never seen before was by her side. Was he a friend? He didn’t seem it. The way they were standing suggested a more formal relationship, but he saw the man bend his head towards her as though in sympathy. He was a passer-by perhaps, listening to her tale and feeling sorry for her. He could just about catch a glimpse of her face from where he crouched. She was very pale and it looked as though she might have been crying. Perhaps the spy in the attic had been more than just a colleague. Too bad. The SIS officer he’d seen her with before was nowhere around, but if Sweetman judged correctly, she would soon be on her way to Baker Street. He’d got to her in time.
The red-haired man was escorting her to a black saloon parked to one side. The man must have offered her a lift, and Sweetman would stake his life on it that they’d head immediately to the West End. He walked swiftly back to the stolen car and slid behind the wheel, waiting for the saloon to edge out of Ellen Street. It should be simple enough to follow at a distance. But it turned out to be far more difficult than he’d expected. The driver seemed to be choosing the most complicated route he could. Why that was so, Sweetman had no clue. All his concentration was focused on the saloon in front, following it on its tortuous journey down narrow streets and across back alleys. At first, he thought the car was travelling westwards and knew a glimmer of satisfaction. Baker Street it was. The driver would have to drop her near number sixty-four and, once she was alone, he would strike. But then the car in front swung suddenly east, then north. Every point of the compass, Sweetman muttered to himself. And the man kept on driving. Where the hell were they going? Gradually, though, he could feel the journey settling into one direction, northwards, now always northwards. He was baffled but pleased. If he could have chosen an ideal direction for the girl to be driven, it would have been north. Everything was falling into place. It was clear his mission was blessed. He had right on his side.
It was a long walk back to Baker Street from Barts, but it gave Grayson time to digest what Connie Telford had told him. When he’d seen Daisy at Ellen Street a short while ago, he’d been pulled apart by a clash of emotions. Her small, upright figure, standing by the side of her murdered husband, was something that tugged ferociously at his heart. Yet at the same time he was angry with her, angry that once more he’d been dismissed on what seemed to him mere caprice. But her friend’s words had given him pause. On the surface, it still made no sense. This poor girl who’d died, whoever she was, had not committed suicide because of Daisy, but that hadn’t stopped Daisy from taking responsibility. The death hadn’t happened on her watch alone; the girl must have met and mixed with dozens of people every day. If you wanted to lay the blame somewhere, then surely it was the hospital itself that might have done more to prevent the tragedy. But that was not how Daisy saw it. And Connie was right about her. These past few weeks she’d been forced to deal with more than anyone should, not least the reappearance of a dead husband. That was the key, of course. Old experience, painful experience, had reared its head. She’d never shaken herself free of India and what had happened there; she still felt a responsibility for the terrible events, though there was no earthly reason why she should. She hadn’t killed Anish or sent Gerald to a watery grave. Just the opposite. She’d almost perished herself.
But crazy or not, her desolation at the girl’s death was closely linked with that disaster. He tried to think it through, to put himself in her shoes. Maybe it wasn’t that remarkable that she’d reacted as she had. While war had pushed most of the world into a frantic merry-go-round—breaking old connections, making unlikely friends, falling in love with strangers—she had anchored herself to the safety of her nurse’s world. She’d used its protection to build a shield, or rather rebuild the one she’d carried with her since her orphaned childhood. He couldn’t really know, couldn’t really understand, what that had been like. His life had been happy. His father had died when he was small, it was true, but he’d been too young for it ever to have had a lasting effect. He’d been reared by a doting mother who had done everything in her power to make his life easy, and to set him on the path to success. He’d made one or two mistakes, found himself up one or two blind alleys, but eventually he’d settled in a job he loved, a life he loved. And always he’d had the reassurance of a loving family. Daisy had not been so blessed, and he could see that the defensive wall she’d built had been necessary. Since she returned from India, she’d hidden behind it. Until that is, Gerald had resurfaced, the dead made living, and did what he was so good at, Grayson thought sourly, destroyed her peace of mind, destroyed her happiness. With her husband’s coming, past and present had coalesced for her, and old and new tragedies become one.
And whether he liked it or not, he was part of that tragedy. Whenever he got too close, she ran from him, thinking to escape back into safety. But there was no escape: recent events had proved that. Sooner or later, she would have to face her demons, face what had happened in India and what was happening right now, here in this injured city. He hoped it would be with him by her side. He was too much of a reminder now of what she didn’t want to recall, but, one day, things might be different. Surely the love they’d shared had to mean something? But even if it didn’t, even if he never managed to change her mind, he would move heaven and earth to keep her safe. He quickened his pace. He must get to Baker Street and see Mike. His colleague would be returning soon with news of Daisy and the small house in Highgate.
Daisy was relieved when the car finally slowed and pulled in to the kerbside. It had been a hazardous journey, racing down the narrowest of roads, charging up one-way streets, constantly changing direction, constantly doubling back on the way
they had come. And always travelling at speed. It was the stuff of every spy story she had ever read, but when they finally stopped, she felt an odd disappointment. She didn’t know what she’d expected but the street they were in was at best unprepossessing, one of the many anonymous residential roads dotted across the north of London. A curtain twitched to her left, but other than that, there was no sign of life. She stared up at the house she imagined was their destination, and its blank windows stared back. Then Corrigan was helping her from the car. Her legs felt frail, as though at any moment they would fold beneath her. Was that reaction to a terrifying journey or simple exhaustion from the events of the day? She could hardly believe it was only this morning that she’d attended Willa’s funeral, only this morning she’d seen the face of the man who’d stalked her, the man from whom she must be kept safe.
‘The police will want to talk to you,’ Mike said, leading the way into a hall papered from top to bottom with cabbage roses. Their feet slapped against the bare linoleum. ‘They’ll send an officer quite shortly. I imagine he’ll be accompanied by a police artist. They’ll hope to get a reasonable description of the man.’
She felt flustered. ‘I’m not sure I’m going to be much help. I would know his eyes, but the rest of him was so thoroughly muffled. The trilby, you see …’
‘But you could describe his eyes, his face shape? And his height, weight, that kind of thing.’
She felt heavy and tired. She wanted to sleep. ‘I think so. I’m sorry if I sound useless, but today was the first time I saw him at all properly.’
‘You’ll do your best, I’m sure.’ Corrigan was upbeat. ‘It will probably be enough. These artist chaps are pretty good.’
He ushered her into the sitting room and her first impressions of the house were confirmed. She hoped she wouldn’t have to make a lengthy stay. Here and there the carpet wore bare patches and the chairs looked uncomfortable. She wished Connie was with her, and wondered what her friend was doing right now and what she was making of Daisy’s absence. She’d promised to be back at Barts in a matter of minutes, but instead, she was likely to be away for days—unless, until, the man was apprehended.
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