Nemesis

by Rory Clements

  He had acquired the tenancy of Wall Hall, a house in the country, from his old friend J. P. Morgan, the millionaire financier, so that he didn’t have to face the night raids that were surely coming to London. Wall Hall – that’s where they would be holding the party for Rosemary.

  But Kennedy’s timing was off again. Just as the Royal Family were making it clear they wouldn’t budge from Buckingham Palace however many bombers Goering dispatched to the skies over London, Joe Kennedy was scooting to safety.

  People called him yellow.

  But mostly, he was despised in Britain because he was chief of the ‘keep the US out’ brigade. He was identified with the ‘Cliveden set’, the clique around Nancy Astor, seen as much too close to Hitler, much too keen on appeasement. Even worse, it was said he had suggested the average American had far more sympathy for Germany than for Britain.

  Britain, he insisted, would be ‘licked’ by Hitler.

  Invitations to parties were drying up. Joe Kennedy was becoming an outcast.

  His defeatism was too much, even for those who had hitherto given him the benefit of the doubt. Every upstanding, right-thinking, patriotic Englishman had a right to be appalled by Kennedy and to loathe him.

  Rowlands had understood how such feelings could be used, both in Britain and France.

  A home-grown assassin who would murder Bill Bullitt in France and Joe Kennedy in England, would kill off any idea of American intervention for good.

  Imagine the reaction in America, Rowlands had said, spreading his hands wide: one or more isolationist politicians – and there were plenty of those in Washington DC – wouldn’t need prompting to blame Britain and France for the murders. There would be loud voices elsewhere. You could almost hear the words they would use, he said. ‘Shot by an English guy, goddamn it – simply because he dared speak out against US involvement in their goddamned European wars? Let the British and their disgraceful empire stew.’

  Elina’s telephone was ringing. She picked it up.

  ‘I don’t trust this line,’ she said. ‘Are we on?’

  ‘One hour.’

  Elina slowly replaced the handset, just as the door opened. Joe Kennedy stood there, grinning, his eyes beady behind his round tortoiseshell spectacles. ‘I was hoping I’d find you here.’

  ‘Oh, Mr Kennedy, sir, I have to go out in a short while. My mother’s been taken sick.’

  ‘Really? I’m sorry to hear that, Elina.’

  ‘Do you mind if I go out for a couple of hours? I’ll be back to tend to all your requirements – and I could also drive you up to Wall Hall.’

  He smiled at her. ‘Did I tell you we were going to have a singer? Young fellow from Cambridge, voice of an angel. Going to sing Ave Maria at the end of Mass. Rose will be in heaven.’

  ‘I’m pretty sure you mentioned that, sir.’

  He closed the door behind him and loosened his tie. ‘Now then, I’m sure a ten-minute wait won’t hurt your mother. You’re my girl, Elina. Ten minutes, quarter an hour max. Sometimes family isn’t enough and I need my girl.’

  She was already climbing from the bed, tapping her watch regretfully.

  ‘You know, I’ve got my eye on a swell new watch for you, Elina. Swiss movement, jewelled, a real beauty like you.’

  ‘You’re a sweet talker, Mr Kennedy.’

  ‘That’s my girl. We both know what we like.’

  CHAPTER 34

  They met just outside the underground station at Clapham South. He was standing with his back to a wall of sandbags. A poster just inside the station entrance said, ‘Hitler will send no warning, so always carry your gas mask.’

  ‘You’re late,’ he said abruptly.

  ‘I got delayed.’

  He had changed into clean clothes: a billowing white shirt, open at the neck to reveal his bronzed skin. ‘Come on,’ she said, firmly taking his hand, ‘I’ll make it up to you.’ She pointed vaguely in the direction of Clapham Park Road, on the south side of the common. ‘There’s a whores’ hotel along there.’

  As they walked, he told her what had happened that morning.

  ‘So when you saw the soldiers you just left?’

  ‘There was a shot. A pistol shot, not a rifle. Rowlands knew he couldn’t get away, so he must have killed Wilde. It was the only thing for him to do. I could have taken on the soldiers, but that would have been suicidal. There were at least seven of them, perhaps many more.’

  ‘So where is Rowlands now?’

  ‘They’ll be interrogating him. But he won’t say a word. You know he won’t. He’s as committed to this as we are. More so.’

  Of course he was. He had recruited them both, hadn’t he? But Marfield’s account had left her reeling. Was he really not sought by the police after all that had happened? Was her own part in all this not suspected by anyone? If they were in the clear, it was a miracle. Marfield attracted trouble like jam attracts wasps.

  The receptionist looked up from her crossword, bored. ‘Pound an hour, darlings, ten shillings an hour after the first.’

  ‘Two hours,’ Marfield said.

  Elina held out a pound note. ‘One,’ she said.

  The bed hadn’t even been made and the sheets were stained. But they didn’t get that far. She ripped open his fly and he pulled up her skirt, then took her standing up against the back of the door; she wrapped her legs around his straining thighs and urged him on. He gripped her buttocks with one hand and her hair with the other.

  Across the room the window was open and the curtains were flapping in the breeze.

  ‘Does he do this to you? The old man?’

  ‘More, Marcus, more. Harder, damn you, I want you harder. Fuck me to death.’

  ‘I fucked a nun in a Spanish convent.’

  She pulled him into her. She screamed, then groaned and shuddered, sliding against the door, fighting him to continue, to do it more. He roared and drove deeper, then his legs went taut and he screamed with her.

  They slipped down to the floor together; he was still inside her. She was breathing hard, then pulled him out, and rose on to one knee, adjusting her skirt and suspender belt. She punched his arm. Hard. ‘Fuck you, Marcus.’

  ‘What was that for?’

  ‘For fucking everything up.’

  ‘God, you’re a difficult bitch.’

  ‘Marcus, everything that’s gone wrong has involved you. I’ve done all the dirty work, cleaning up your mess.’

  ‘And I’m the one who’ll get topped.’

  She sighed and pulled him to her. She held his beautiful face between her soft hands and kissed his lips. ‘You’re a brave man.’

  ‘And you are a brave woman, Elina. We are in this together.’

  ‘Of course. But this is not about us. This is for the world we want.’

  She was on her feet now, smoothing herself down, combing her hair in the mottled mirror hanging askew above the light switch by the door. ‘We will rid the world of Stalin’s red cancer.’ She kicked him. ‘Now, get up. We have to think this through. Between the time you lost Wilde at the windmill and Rowlands picked him up on the road, he called Eaton and the woman, yes?’

  ‘Rowlands heard every word. Wire tap to their phones. That’s how he found the bastard out in the Fens.’

  ‘Is the tap still there?’

  ‘It must be – but only Rowlands can access it. And we can’t access Rowlands.’

  ‘Eaton must know about you.’

  ‘But he won’t have a shred of evidence, except the hearsay of a man over the phone. And that man is now dead.’

  ‘There’s the second film.’

  ‘Well, Eaton doesn’t have it. Nor does he have any witnesses to my time in Spain. You saw to that yourself with the trick cyclist and Claire and Rosa. So we’re in the clear: there’s no evidence that I’m anything but a shell-shocked refugee from the International Brigades.’

  Hugging her arms around her slender body, Elina went to the window and looked out over Clapham Common. Workmen in
overalls were busy digging it up; for more air raid shelters, she presumed. She didn’t smoke but she wanted a cigarette. World events, she reflected, were shaped by big powerful people. Men in suits and uniforms, in government and the military.

  But it was astonishing what small people could do if they had the will. If they were prepared to harden their souls and do unpleasant deeds for the greater good. In 1914 Gavrilo Princip had changed world history with one bullet to the neck of the Archduke Ferdinand in Sarajevo; such was the power of one determined man. She had the will. And so, she believed, did Marcus.

  ‘They must be hunting you,’ she said, still unconvinced by his assurances.

  He shrugged. ‘Maybe, but I don’t think so. I haven’t seen the papers or heard the wireless. Maybe they’ll play it down? They don’t want panicky stories about fifth columnists and German spies: people are jittery enough as it is.’

  She wasn’t convinced. ‘What about the Kennedys?’

  Marfield shook his head. ‘Even if I am in the papers, the Kennedys don’t know my name. I’m just a singer from Cambridge. And when it’s done, we’ll want it all over the press and wireless. The government won’t be able to hush it up. The American press will be all over it. This will be the biggest story of the war. America will hate us – and anyone over there who suggests lending so much as a cup of sugar to the British will be derided.’

  ‘So it’s on?’

  ‘It’s on.’

  ‘And you know exactly where to go, and the time?’

  He tapped his forehead. ‘I’ve been there before.’

  ‘You must be careful, Marcus,’ she urged. ‘There will be a bodyguard, almost certainly armed. You must be taken alive so that you can give your testimony in court.’

  ‘Do you doubt me?’

  ‘Of course not.’ But she did. ‘My only fear is the second film.’

  ‘I’ve come to the conclusion Wilde really didn’t know where it was. Perhaps my mother was wrong; perhaps my father destroyed it. Anyway, if it turns up next month or next year, the world will have moved on. I’ll be yesterday’s news. They’re going to hang me anyway – so what do I have to lose?’

  Nothing, of course. But she did. Which was why there were still matters to be resolved.

  She kissed him again. ‘Go, Marcus. Keep your head down.’ I’ll deal with everything else, she thought. Safer that way; fewer mistakes.

  He laughed. ‘I should have married you.’

  ‘We’d have killed each other. By the way, did the nun enjoy it?’

  He looked at her for a few seconds then shrugged. He put two fingers to his temple and made a popping sound with his beautiful lips. Elina marvelled at the icicle in the heart. Only Marcus Marfield could do this.

  *

  The older woman’s body had been found on the rocky shore close to the harbour, not far from the boat. The boy must have climbed or crawled up the shallow slope to the Cullanans’ modest white-painted house, where he now lay in bed, tended by the doctor from the mainland and nursed by Catherine.

  And so that left the boy’s mother. If she wasn’t on the shore, and she hadn’t made it into the little harbour village where most of the inhabitants of this rocky outcrop lived and worked, then where was she?

  Martin walked in the direction of the lighthouse. He walked at a steady pace in a series of long turns so that every inch of ground could be seen. Sheep ambled away at his approach and scuttled if they were too slow and he got too close.

  He knew this island as well as any man or woman alive. Like his father and many generations of men before that, he had ground a living from the seas surrounding this place and, from the land, had harvested a few vegetables and bred enough livestock for a little meat and milk and eggs. Times were always hard. In a harsh winter of storms, they might be cut off from the mainland for a month or two at a go.

  At the lighthouse, black painted from top to toe, he stopped and looked westwards to the vast empty Atlantic. Next stop, the new world. Clambering onto the rocks, he knew he would find no one alive down there amid the swirling white-water waves that crashed here endlessly at the end of their three thousand miles journey. The sun was in the west now, blinding bright when it slipped away from the clouds.

  Dermot, the lighthouse keeper, was waving to him from the balcony. ‘A cup of tea, Martin?’ he called down.

  ‘No, thank you, Dermot.’

  ‘Martin, we’d have found her by now if she was alive.’

  He nodded, but he wasn’t ready to accept it yet. Somehow the boy had escaped the boat and stumbled up to their house, so why not the missing woman? The other men said she must have been thrown from the boat when it hit the rocks and if the rocks hadn’t killed her first, the merciless undertow would have carried her out and the sea would have done for her. But Martin clung to hope; if she had been injured, she could have crawled somewhere and be lying unconscious. Where though? There were few places of concealment on this tiny island, but that didn’t mean there weren’t any.

  ‘Will you be killing the pig this week, Martin?’

  ‘Aye, and you’ll get your share. But not today.’

  Dermot touched his cap. ‘God go with you, Martin Cullanan.’

  *

  It took Wilde many hours to get home. At first the soldiers were deeply suspicious of him, despite his bindings. They trained their weapons on him, nervous as hell – and with good reason. None had seen battle and yet they had somehow chanced upon a scene of carnage in the English countryside.

  When it transpired there was a telephone in the house, they summoned the police and waited. Wilde was told they were in the countryside south-east of Royston, perhaps twenty miles south of Cambridge. For the next thirty minutes Wilde answered Lance Corporal Elphick’s questions in monosyllables: it was pointless explaining everything in detail to him when he’d only have to go over the same ground again with others.

  When the police finally arrived in strength, they refused to take seriously Wilde’s request that they call Philip Eaton or, at the very least, Detective Inspector Tomlinson in Cambridge. Nor were they interested when he suggested they put out an alert to stop a German-made silver sports car driven by a man named Marcus Marfield. Instead they seemed to regard Wilde as their prime suspect. His hands might have been bound, but he was the only one alive out of four people in the house.

  In the afternoon, he was taken to a local police station and placed in a cell where his bindings were removed and replaced with police issue handcuffs. It felt like a re-run of his arrest after the death of Rosa Cortez in the market square.

  Wilde underwent further questioning. A fourth body had been found, a man in his fifties named Keith Caney, who lived alone in the Fens. A farmer and a widower, and well-respected locally, he had been a special constable, helping out on big occasions or when the force was under strength. His full-time colleagues very much wanted to catch the bastard who had slit his throat and it was taking a lot to persuade them that Wilde wasn’t the killer.

  At last, some time after dusk, the cell door opened and Eaton was standing there, accompanied by a Special Branch chief inspector from London. Wilde’s immediate concern was Lydia. Had she been left unprotected? All he wanted was to get home to her, and make sure she was safe.

  ‘She’s with the Weirs out at Girton,’ said Eaton. ‘She’ll be all right. Weir keeps guns and knows how to use them. My driver will take us there soon enough – you’ll see her within the hour. But first, Wilde, you have to tell me everything that’s happened.’

  ‘Do you have any idea what I’ve been through, Eaton? I can hardly bear to describe the things I’ve seen.’

  ‘I understand, old boy. Truly I do.’

  Wilde sighed. He felt as though the sun had gone out. ‘There was a film,’ he said. ‘And now it’s destroyed. But there’s another film – and Marcus Marfield is willing to kill as many people as necessary in order to get his hands on it. More than that, all I can tell you is that your good friend Guy Rowlands is – was �
�� a fucking traitor and a Nazi. The only decent thing he did was to shoot himself.’

  Eaton recoiled. ‘Guy Rowlands?’

  ‘You heard he was dead?’

  ‘Yes, but I thought . . .’ he clutched his forehead. ‘I thought he died saving you.’

  ‘He killed himself to save himself from a charge of murder and treason.’

  ‘Ye Gods – and to think I brought him into your world.’

  ‘At least at the end he had the decency to be disgusted by Marfield. But that’s all. Oh, and by the way, unless you told him where I was, he must have had a tap on Lydia’s phone.’

  ‘I’m sorry, Wilde. Truly I’m sorry.’ Eaton was shaking. He sat down on the wooden chair to catch his breath. ‘I suppose this all explains one or two things.’

  ‘You mean the way Honoré found me in France?’

  ‘Yes, of course. Rowlands must have been tracking you through friends in the Deuxième Bureau. You were set up to bring Marfield home from the moment you set sail for France. That way Guy’s part would be invisible. Wilde, there are other things – more recent things – that we must talk about.’

  Wilde looked blankly at the floor. He was utterly drained. However slowly and with however much sensitivity the questions came, he couldn’t find the words to answer. He simply couldn’t describe all the horrors he had seen. Not yet. At last he sighed and raised his head to meet Eaton’s eyes.

  ‘You can’t do this now, can you, Wilde?’

  ‘I’m sorry. I have to see Lydia and I have to sleep. But you know what – who – you’re looking for. Isn’t that enough at the moment?’

  ‘Come on, we’ll fetch you home.’

  *

  The drive to Girton seemed to take forever. The night was overcast and they were on severely restricted headlights in accordance with blackout regulations. That meant a crawl.

  Lydia was shaking as he took her in his arms at the Weirs’ large and pleasant house. She seemed frailer and smaller than he remembered.

  ‘Thank God you’re alive, Tom. I was terrified.’

  ‘Me, too,’ he admitted. ‘I’ve been worried about you.’ He wouldn’t tell her, yet, what he had endured.