by John Gardner
“Of course,” she told him with a sly little smile.
“Nothing going on except some Frogs from the Postal Service of 1st Frog Motorized. I got out to take a look-see along some of the side streets and Jerry started shelling us. By the time I got back, the General and his three vehicles had gone. Finally I was trapped when Jerry blew the bridges.”
“So?” Tommy seemed unimpressed.
“So I went to ground and stayed there for the best part of six months. But that’s another, and rather long, story.” He took a deep breath and swallowed. “When I finally got back I found I was missing believed killed, and the fella at the War House said use it, make it an advantage.” He shifted, his left hand going into the breast pocket of his blazer, pulling out a small piece of pasteboard, size of a visiting card. “Military Intelligence, Tommy. It’s all there.” He gave a fast, attractive grin; almost knowing what Tommy Livermore was about to say.
“Bit of an oxymoron, Curry, eh? Military Intelligence, what?” Tommy took the card and studied it, closing one eye and giving young Shepherd the occasional droll look, lifting an eyebrow, squinting at him sideways on. Finally he grunted, sat up straight and muttered, “Better make the phone call then, eh? Better get you sorted, young Shepherd. Right?” He flung the door open and slid out, shutting it again. Rather angrily Suzie thought.
She felt the seat blossom as Tommy removed his weight, but Curry didn’t shift, still thigh to thigh, rather enjoying it. She said, “What’s this all about?” Joined at the hip, she thought. Fancy.
“Oh, Tommy being pedantic. Checking up on me. Doesn’t change much does he?”
“I wouldn’t know. I’ve only known him since 1940 and he’s stayed roughly the same since then.”
“Still brutal is he?”
“Oh, I wouldn’t say bru…”
“I would. He used to beat people for dumb insolence in the ranks on Corps parades. Corps. OTC parades. Officers Training Corps. School.”
“M’Tutor’s,” she said with a sly-boots smirk. “How horrid.”
“I used to think it was like being in Wellington’s army. Chaps being flogged for minor infringements on parade. Dumb insolence and the like.”
“He called you James Morrison…”
“Right in one. James Morrison Shepherd. James, James Morrison Morrison, said to his mother, said he…”
“Then why the spicy nickname?”
“Curry?” A little laugh. “Oh, nothing to do with spice. We’re an Anglo-Irish family. Boat builders. Up near Galway. I’m the eldest son of the present generation and the eldest son traditionally takes over the making of small boats: currach; so Currach Shepherd; hence Curry Shepherd.”
“A currach is…?”
“A small boat; a coracle…”
“Oh, yes. And now you’re doing..?”
“I didn’t say, but your boss, Tommy, is checking up on my credentials e’en as we speak, as they say,” this last drawled out exaggeratingly. “Actually, I’m on a little roving commission that I don’t think our Ginger Tom’s going to like.”
She giggled at the Ginger Tom. In some ways it was apt. She didn’t think Tommy had ever been unfaithful to her, but he certainly eyed up the ladies: very blatant about it. Mind you she had been unfaithful to Tommy – one night with the Wing Commander: room 504. But that was different. Of course.
“So what d’you do for our Tom?”
She thought for a moment, then said, “Actually Tommy rescued me.” In her head she saw Tommy as he was when she first met him. She had been following a lead with, of all people, Shirley Cox.
In the autumn of 1940 Suzie was out of her depth. The Blitz on London was at its most horrible, she was untrained as a detective and her senior officer, Detective Chief Inspector ‘Big Toe’ Harvey, had been injured by a passing bomb, leaving her unsuitably in charge when a headline murder case landed on her patch.
Fleet Street had a field day, and the papers were quickly awash with stories about this young, inexperienced woman in charge of an atrocious killing. In those days women coppers investigating ’orrible murders raised the hackles in a certain type of ‘Concerned of Camberwell’ correspondent in the editorial columns. The Yard was angry, thought she’d been professionally putting herself about a bit.
Eventually she was told to keep her head down and, if she needed help, to ring Detective Chief Superintendent Tommy Livermore. She did just that and found a pleasant, if avuncular, voice at the distant end, giving her sensible advice and telling her to just get on with it. He would step in and assist if push came to shove.
Push did come to shove and her cry for help was answered in the reception hall of a tasteless block of service apartments in Marylebone: Derbyshire Mansions where she first came face to face with Tommy.
She was later to discover that his entrances were usually made with some dramatic bravura, and on this occasion he swished in with his team around him, making Suzie comment, “Orchestra, dancing girls, the lot.”
Shirley added, “And a male voice choir.”
They both agreed that Tommy himself arrived in great style, the impeccable suit, handmade shoes, greatcoat across the shoulders, the energy, physical presence, and the all-consuming smile. It just about knocked her off her feet. (Just as you could Mr James Morrison Shepherd, she considered now. If you put your mind to it. Same mould as Tommy but much younger.)
The following night – back in 1940 – Dandy Tom Livermore had taken Suzie to dinner at the Ritz where he told her that she was one of a number of hand-picked women detectives who were to be groomed for stardom against the day when women coppers would be de rigueur (there were only about three people in the Met who could clearly see that female police were really here to stay. Tommy was one of them: though you’d rarely know it these days). That night she left the Ritz as one of the Reserve Squad, and during the remainder of that horrendous year, Tommy was there for her, and soon after he became her first ever lover.
Now, here he was again outside the car and talking ten to the dozen to Brian.
“Going to the nick,” he said once he’d returned to his seat – next to Brian in the front this time, his rightful place. “We’ve got a lot to talk about, young Curry, haven’t we? At least you’ve got a lot to tell me. You’re a Major I gather.” Not even a pause for breath. “Substantive rank of Major they tell me. Quite gone up in the world.”
“What about me seeing the bodies?” Curry’s voice seemed to be saying that Tommy really didn’t cut any ice with him because he had his orders to follow, his own agenda and his own most important end game to play out.
“They’re pretty terrible and I want the doc to do his business before anyone else sees them. Your bosses say I can show you the happy snapshots when we have them. They also say that what you have to tell me is urgent. So we’ll do it down the nick. Okay?”
“As our American allies say, ’aw my aching back.’” Curry didn’t even smile and this was a long way from dumb insolence. Suzie could feel Tommy’s fury from where she sat in the back of the Wolesley. Indeed, she feared for his spleen. “Ask you a question, Tommy. What’s so terrible about the bodies?”
Tommy took half a minute to make up his mind. “Because they’re a mess, Curry.”
“You know who they are? Identified them?”
“Oh yes. The doc knew both of them. Colonel Tim Weaving, Glider Pilot Regiment and Mrs Bascombe, wife of Bunny Bascombe VC.”
“And what kind of mess are they in?”
“Some sod’s really roughed them up: some sadistic bugger. Or, and this sounds daft, it looks like someone put ’em to the question.”
“Really?” Curry said, as though this fact was the last possible thing in the world to interest him.
Back at Wantage Police Station Shirley Cox had the new office up, running and almost organized, with the exception of the extra telephones that, she assured Tommy, would be installed by noon tomorrow. In his current mood a grunt was high praise.
“You mind if I check
up with the Station Master, Chief?” she asked.
“Just see what he’s got in the way of digs for us? Doss house? Bed and Breakfast, or palatial hotel suite?”
“Yes. Right. Do your worst Shirley, and if it’s a palatial suite it’s mine.”
As Shirley made her way out, Suzie thought to herself that she had been right when she first saw her in 1940. Shirley was very like Hedy Lamarr: the hair, a quick glimpse of her face and certainly her figure brought to mind that film star who caused such a stir in Hollywood when it was revealed she had – long ago (1932) – done a nude scene in a Czech film titled Ecstasy. Old Shirl could have done a lot of nude scenes and got applause all round from the boys in the Reserve Squad. Some standing ovations an’ all.
Suzie looked back towards Tommy who was staring at Curry Shepherd. “So, you’re a funny, young Shepherd. Major Curry Shepherd of the oddities. They told me I should ask you for the details.”
Curry looked hard at Tommy Livermore. He nodded and, in spite of what he had already been told, asked if someone could definitely confirm one of the bodies in Portway House was Colonel Tim Weaving of the Glider Pilot Regiment. Tommy said yes, the local doctor had confirmed it, and the woman’s ID as well.
“Then I’ll have to use your telephone.” He spoke to the operator about making a trunk call to London, and a minute later had someone on the line. “Firefly for Dormouse,” he said, briskly and Suzie thought, ‘Gosh, they really do use that gobbledegook with code words, just like in the moving pictures. Gobbledegook was a word she’d learned from one of the American officers when they were in East Anglia: meant to sound like turkeys gobbling all over the place and meant language made into nonsense by elaborate words and technical terms.
“Yes,” Curry confirmed to someone at the other end of the telephone. “Of course, sir … Yes, absolutely. Detective Chief Superintendent Livermore … sir, yes I was … Restricted … Totally, sir … Definitely Weaving … Yes, very good. I think they should be exceptionally careful regarding promotions to that spot, sir. Yes, I’ll put him in the picture. That’ll be okay, no worry.” And more along those line. “I’ll see to it, sir … Right…” and he closed the line, hung up the handset and smiled, first at Suzie, then Tommy. “It would seem that, because you’re working the murder of Lieutenant Colonel Weaving I can give you the gen. Strictly need-to-know of course.”
“Oh, strictly, of course.” Tommy was being persistently difficult.
Curry lit a cigarette, didn’t offer them to anyone else and blew a long stream of smoke towards the ceiling before starting his tale. “I got back to England in a fishing boat from somewhere close to Ostend. Very cold, January 1941 and the man I saw at the War House had what he thought was a great idea. I was put on to training men who were going to work at Camp XX – Camp 20. They were faced with me, a man who claimed to be Anglo-Irish but could not prove he wasn’t missing believed killed in Belgium in ’40. Most of them thought I was a real Nazi infiltrator. My old boss, General Brooke wasn’t told and he was approached several times, said he doubted that I was alive.” Taking another lungful of smoke and bringing it down his nose this time – brandished his smoking tricks did our Curry. “By this time,” he continued, “We’d put most of the Nazi spies in the bag before they got very far. Blundering lot of idiots most of them. Put ’em in the bag then took the bag down to Camp XX.”
Curry told them Camp XX was not about getting spies to face the firing squad. “It wasn’t so much about termination as playing them back to Nazi Germany.” Certainly, the staff tried to de-gut them, fillet them, clean them out, but the aim was not to see them ending up on the Tower of London Rifle Range. “They were treated well. The object of the exercise was to get them working with us. Any odd bits of information on the side were a bonus.”
Most of the captured spies, and they had caught the bulk of them – mainly because they were brought into England and Wales in such a ham-handed fashion – finally bowed to the inevitable and sent their messages in their prescribed way. “The information sent was, of course, the stuff we gave them. I only know of two who refused to cooperate. Alas, they ended up on the Tower’s Rifle Range at six o’clock in the morning. Not a glamorous end for the Fatherland and Führer.”
Curry worked at Camp XX for three months. After that he went on a couple of courses, was upped to major and now operated as what he described as “a floating go-between in the intelligence community”.
“And where’re you floatin’ at the moment?” Tommy’s drawl became worse and Curry started to show a shadow of annoyance.
“I drift between the MI6, MI5, Camp XX and the boys in Baker Street, Tom. You know who the boys in Baker Street are?” Like throwing down the gauntlet.
“Would they have anything to do with Sherlock Holmes or Dr Watson?”
“Close,” Curry smiled and told him to try again. “After all, Tommy, you’ve got a sister in the business.”
Suzie, as much as she tried couldn’t stop the flush creeping from her neck onto her cheeks. She had spent that one night of unfaithfulness to Tommy after seeing him with another woman, in close heads-together conversation. Only later did she discover the truth, that it was his sister, Alison, back on a brief visit from doing something incredibly hush-hush. The tune of ‘This Can’t be Love’ ran through her head and her cheeks became redder.
Tommy sucked his teeth. “Must be an off-shoot of one of the other funny groups, organisations, departments, whatever you call them.”
Curry said, “Okay,” loudly as though Tommy had made a bold stab at the answer and landed close to the truth. Then he laid it out. “The boys in Baker Street’re various sections of the SOE – Special Operations Executive: the people who are at the sharp end of setting Europe ablaze, which was what Winston asked them to do. They’re not just in Baker Street of course but that’s as good a generic address as any for them.” For a moment the pale grey eyes caressed Suzie, once more making her feel uneasy.
“And who do I work for?” he asked, as though either Tommy or Suzie had formed the question in the way they looked at him. “Well, you might say England, or Winston – and that would be right – but the true answer is the CIGS: General Sir Alan Brooke himself, my old boss, now elevated to head soldier. Chief of the Imperial General Staff, and the word is that he’ll be a Field Marshal by the New Year.”
“Always said you’d go far, young Shepherd,” Tommy muttered. “Lonely up there at the top is it?”
“Tommy, tell me you’d rather be working with me at your back. The alternative would be the hairy great coppers with Special Branch. Not a nice thought.”
Tommy, Suzie noticed, didn’t meet his eye, sucked his teeth again, noncommittal. At last he said, “Then tell me why I have to work with you, Curry?”
“Because I’m dealing with security for COSSAC.”
“And what’s COSSAC when it’s home?”
“Chief of Staff to the Supreme Allied Commander. A post that has operated since April without a Supreme Allied Commander.”
Tommy nodded. “Yes.”
“But they’ll appoint one soon enough,” Curry smiled. “And next year he’ll be bustling along in front of us all, but there are two reasons why you should be particularly interested in all this…”
“Do tell,” Tommy, face set in a rictus, acid in his throat.
Curry nodded, as if to say he understood Tommy’s caustic manner. “Please, I want you to know what’s going on. What I’m going to tell you next is totally classified. It mustn’t leave either of your brains…”
“Oh, come on…” Tommy began.
“COSSAC lives, moves and has its being down in St James’s Square. Norfolk House, know it Tom?”
“I know where it is. Pinky-red building.”
“Good,” Curry’s normal attitude of languor changed and the words now cracked like bullets passing overhead. “Good, because every couple of days or so there are meetings at COSSAC: forty or fifty senior officers, colonels and upwards, under General Fred
erick Morgan. These men have been planning the greatest battle so far in this damned war: the invasion of the occupied continent, Hitler’s Fortress Europe.”
“Really?”
“Yes, really, Tom. These men know when, where and, to a great extent, how the invasion’ll take place. So they sit on the greatest secret alive in this country at the moment. And, Tommy, maybe you’ll sit up when I tell you that Lieutenant Colonel Tim Weaving was a member of that planning committee. Tim Weaving was a keeper of many of those secrets, so it’s sort of important if he died being tortured. Think about it.”
During these last words, Curry Shepherd had taken a few steps back towards the door. Now he had reached it, and with a little mock bow and flourish he said, “I go. I come back.”
He hadn’t been out of the door for more than five seconds before Suzie realised that she missed him.
Chapter Five
THEY WENT OVER to The Bear Hotel – Tommy, with Suzie and Cathy Wimereux, together with Dennis Free, while the rest of the team found their rooms at The Blue Boar, opposite the Post Office. Tommy, Suzie thought, had used his considerable charm on the lady at reception to get rooms facing onto the Market Square and so close to one another that, to use his own expression, he’d know when she changed her mind.
For some reason she couldn’t quite comprehend, Suzie was feeling unusually indecisive, and had done so for some time. Not that she had to make any immediate decisions, but deep within her she felt uncertain about life: about her life at the moment within the Metropolitan police, and her long term life with Tommy. The last wasn’t new as she’d been putting him off for the best part of a year, and felt guilty about it. Tommy was the man who had made her into a woman and taught her to love – not just in the physical sense, but in the more lasting and profound way, expanding her mind, helping her to reach higher, to stretch out towards unexplored horizons, teaching her to laugh. Laughter was important she discovered. But Tommy was a good deal older than Suzie. She wondered if this was at the root of the problem.
