The Spyglass File (The Forensic Genealogist Book 4)

by Nathan Dylan Goodwin

  Daniel pressed down on the gun button and squirted off a long round, watching as the shells ripped into the Messerschmitt’s fuselage. A great puff of black smoke revealed that he had struck the engine. He throttled back, watching the enemy aircraft losing speed and losing altitude. The pilot was battling with the controls.

  Daniel lined up the ailing machine and pumped out his last round of ammo. That was it. The Messerschmitt began to spiral into an unstoppable corkscrew, smoke belching from the engine.

  His work here was done. He turned the Hurricane in a slow, elegant bank, searching the skies for the rest of the squadron. He spotted them, a thousand feet above, appearing to regroup. What was left of the Messerschmitt swarm were disappearing back towards their base in northern France.

  He glanced at his instruments. Glycol temperature 102 degrees. Oil pressure 74 lbs. Fuel down to 25 gallons. All okay, but without ammunition, it was time to head home. Wheeler’s voice over the R/T confirmed with control that Jacko Squadron were returning to Hawkinge.

  ‘Jacko, this is Sapper. Caution on landing, some airfield damage. Over.’

  The aerodrome had been hit again. Daniel sighed and set course for base. The adrenalin that had been thrusting through his veins began to slow and the pores punctured by sweat, began to dry. He breathed normally as the fear and isolation receded.

  His mind was empty as the aerodrome drew closer. Drained, he entered the circuit above the airfield.

  ‘Sapper, this is Jacko Red 2,’ Daniel said breathlessly. ‘Coming in to land.’

  ‘Red 2, this is Sapper, you’re free to land.’

  With a smile of relief, Daniel pulled his speed back below two hundred miles an hour, dropped the wheels down and turned into the final approach.

  The airfield, perforated with fresh bomb craters, came swiftly closer. He halved his speed as the aerodrome perimeter passed below him. Closing the throttle down, he held the plane’s nose up, the wheels reuniting with the grass below. The Hurricane slowed as it glided across the airfield. He taxied the plane to a standstill then killed the engine.

  With a rabid desperation, Daniel undid his oxygen mask and pushed his helmet off his head, feeling the wind coolly caressing his hot scalp. He had made it. He looked around him. Had the others—apart from Barker—made it, too? So far, there was no sign of Smith.

  Daniel climbed from the Hurricane as his ground crew began to prepare the plane for the next scramble. He darted into the dispersal hut. ‘Has Smith returned?’ he demanded.

  The operator shook his head. ‘Not yet.’

  Daniel strode back outside and looked up into the skies. Nothing. He remembered seeing his Hurricane banking away from the combat.

  ‘All right?’ a voice asked him. It was Woody.

  Daniel didn’t know if Woody had heard that Barker had been shot down. The two of them had been close friends since training. He just needed to say it. ‘Barker was caught.’

  ‘I know,’ Woody said quietly. ‘Such a bloody decent chap. Did you see what happened?’

  Daniel shook his head. ‘Not really. A 109 crept up behind him and, well, that was that. No time to bail.’ When he saw the look of loss in Woody’s eyes, he wanted to add, ‘It would have been quick and painless,’ but he couldn’t, not to another pilot. Woody would have known the sheer terror that Barker would have faced in the moments before his death. Instead, he changed the subject. ‘How’s the girl?’ he asked remorsefully.

  ‘She’ll be okay. She’s over there,’ he said, pointing to a distant figure on the other side of the aerodrome. ‘I’m taking her to the Odeon to watch The Grapes of Wrath.’

  ‘You’re not flying again today, then?’

  Woody shook his head. ‘It’s got to go away to be fixed—I’m off until another plane can be brought in.’

  ‘Lucky you. What happened here, while we were up?’

  Woody explained, ‘About twenty Heinkels and Dorniers decided to drop us some presents. No warning—pretty harrowing. They did a couple of circuits, then buggered off back to France.’

  Daniel raised his eyebrows and stood to leave. ‘Enjoy your grapes,’ he said.

  He watched Woody walking across to the other side of the aerodrome.

  ‘Say cheese!’ someone called from behind him. It was Jones, holding up Daniel’s Box Brownie, taking a photograph.

  ‘Give it here,’ Daniel snapped, reaching out for his camera. ‘I’m not in the mood.’

  Jones pulled a face and handed it over.

  Daniel carried his camera from the dispersal hut and slumped down into the basket-weave chair from which it seemed as though he had only risen a few moments ago. He closed his eyes, trying to settle his thoughts.

  The phone rang again.

  Chapter Eleven

  21st September 1940, West Kingsdown, Kent

  ‘Hurry up in there!’ a clipped, well-spoken voice called from the other side of the toilet door. ‘What are you doing in there, Elsie Finch?’

  ‘Oh, just be patient, for God’s sake,’ Elsie retorted spiritedly, knowing full well who was on the other side.

  She went through the motions of flushing the toilet, despite not having used it. She ran the tap, the water gushing noisily into the sink while she stared at herself in the mirror. The tiredness was starting to manifest itself in her features. She felt sure that, if anyone looked closely enough at her eyes, they would see there—very clearly—something more than the usual trials of work taking its toll on her.

  She took an aspirin from her bag and swallowed it down with a mouthful of tap water. For the past week, she had experienced terrible period pains like she had never felt before. As usual, her breasts were tender, yet her period had not yet started. Could I be… She couldn’t bring herself to think of the word. And yet the thought persisted, buzzing around her head like an assiduous insect. She was just very late, that was all. It happened. Since she’d been living with the other girls for the past month, all of their periods had gone haywire. Just yesterday Betty had said that she’d once heard that the periods of women living together—she gave the example of nuns, of all people—often became synchronised. She couldn’t offer any explanation as to why other than to say that it was ‘all to do with the moon.’ Elsie hadn’t believed it at the time, but maybe that was the reason for her unusual lateness. She pulled her blue uniform jacket tight over her belly. It didn’t feel any different. Or did it, now that she was looking closely at it? Maybe it was a bit tighter.

  ‘Elsie Finch, if you don’t speed up in there, I’m going to kick this bloody door down!’

  Elsie grinned and opened the door to see Violet Christmas, dancing some ridiculous toilet-needing jig. Violet frowned. ‘Move out of my way, Elsie Finch,’ she said, barging past her. ‘You really are a tiresome creature at times.’

  Elsie allowed normality and the sounds of work to seep back into her head and to slowly wrap themselves neatly around her marauding sense of worry, banishing it into the recesses of her mind. She strode along the short corridor to the operations room, the hum of activity becoming louder. As she neared the double doors the muddled noise began to separate into the individual sounds that characterised the room, day and night: whispered urgent telephone conversations; the purr from the raft of R/T receivers; mumbled discussion; chairs scraping and the footsteps of operators hastening about the place. Elsie liked the noise. It was the sound of determination and resolved focus.

  She was only now, five weeks in, getting used to the new place. Following on from persistent raids on the aerodrome at Hawkinge, the station’s new commanding officer, Flight Lieutenant Budge announced that the Air Ministry had decided to move them to safer, higher ground. West Kingsdown, as the highest point in north Kent, had been selected. Elsie, along with Betty, Rosemary and Aileen had been given twenty-four hours’ notice to pack up and leave. When they had arrived at their billet, Elsie had been delighted to find that the quirky girl that she had met in line at the Air Ministry, Violet Christmas, was also going to be li
ving and working with them.

  Opening the door, Elsie entered the operations room—it was in a converted toy factory and was much larger than Maypole Cottage. It was as though, all of a sudden, the value of their work had been perceived higher up the war food chain. They had been granted more receivers and more WAAF operators and, at long last, a new complex telephone system had been installed. Thankfully, the days of listening helplessly to gloating Luftwaffe pilots, flying unseen above a squadron of Spitfires, were gone. The awful times of a fellow operator screaming, ‘Look up! Look up!’ and not being able to take action fast enough to warn them, were over. They had managed to get the process of hearing intelligence over the R/T to passing that information to the necessary units, pilots or control rooms down to just one minute.

  Elsie wandered through the maze of machines to an office at the back of the operations room. It was grey, windowless and held the permanent stench of stale smoke. Being situated next door to the Intelligence Office, it had very quickly been dubbed the Unintelligent Office. It was bland, nondescript and used for a variety of purposes—the copying up of log books, the jotting down of some administrative work, the grabbing of a few minutes’ break or an animated discussion over some piece of uncertain intelligence.

  On one of the desks, Elsie had set out a great stack of operation logs, a map of England and a pad and pencil. She picked up a log book from the top of the stack just as the door opened and in walked Violet, carrying two mugs of black coffee. She handed one to Elsie. ‘What have we got, then?’ Violet yawned, taking a sip from her drink, then wincing at the discovery of the temperature.

  ‘Nothing, that’s the problem,’ Elsie answered. ‘We need to go through this pile to find any previous mention of Daimler.’ The word had been said today—mistakenly, the WAAF operator who had heard it believed—over the R/T by a Luftwaffe pilot. That an unidentified code word had been used was nothing out of the ordinary—it was a daily occurrence in fact, but that it had been used by a pilot testing out what they believed was a new, night navigational beam called Knickebein, was cause for great concern.

  ‘Well,’ Violet started, making no attempt to lower her voice, ‘it would save a barrow-load of time if they would actually tell us everything that they knew about these bloody beams.’ She pulled out a packet of Wills’ Gold Flakes and offered one to Elsie.

  ‘Thanks,’ Elsie responded, considering what Violet had just said. It was true. Their job had quickly evolved into one of not simply gathering the information, but of trying to piece it together and help to solve the puzzle. The only problem was that they were never privy to all the pieces of the blasted puzzle. From the limited intelligence with which they had been entrusted, they knew that a Heinkel had been shot down and on board had been some kind of new navigational device. Interrogated prisoners and intelligence from ‘reliable sources’ had also confirmed that the beams were being used to assist night bombing. The RAF wouldn’t have a hope in hell’s chance of stopping the Luftwaffe flying blind on a pre-determined course. Daimler could not only hold a clue to a future target, but to determining the direction in which the beams were travelling.

  Violet held a match to her cigarette, then to Elsie’s. She drew an impossibly long drag and held her breath for what seemed like an eternity. Finally, she blew out the smoke in a long, slow column. ‘Daimler,’ she finally said. ‘It has to be something to do with cars.’

  Elsie nodded. It was an obvious conclusion that a child in her class could have drawn, yet it still held some validity. Seldom was a Luftwaffe code word—or RAF, for that matter—chosen at random; there was always some kind of a connection to the word that it was attempting to disguise. ‘Would they bomb a car factory?’ Elsie mused. ‘Do we even have factories still producing cars anymore?’

  Violet screwed up her face, unconvinced. ‘Military vehicles?’

  Elsie had written the word Daimler at the top of the notepad. Below it, she wrote Violet’s suggestion, followed by a pair of large question marks. ‘Okay, let’s start wading through the log books, then.’

  They each took a book in turn and began scanning through for any mention of the code word, military vehicles or anything else that might just fit.

  It was tiring work. They smoked, took Benzedrine tablets with coffee to keep themselves awake and searched long into the night. Elsie took frequent toilet breaks, on each occasion expecting to find that her period had started. But it never had. The idea that it wasn’t going to start any time soon gained more solid traction as the night, and her tiredness, wore on.

  Nothing further had been added to the notepad until the early hours of the morning, when a bleary-eyed Violet spotted something. She sat bolt upright and tossed the log book in front of Elsie.

  It took her a moment, then she saw it. On the night of August 19th, a WAAF operator had transcribed an R/T conversation between a group of Heinkel pilots. She had written Daimler? in her entry and was seemingly unable to offer any suggestion as to its operational meaning. From the transcript in front of Elsie, it seemed that the word had been blurted out, then nothing more had been said.

  Violet smiled smugly, then collapsed in a dramatic performance onto the desk. ‘Can we go home now?’

  But Elsie had woken up. ‘No, we need to know where they hit that night.’ She leapt up and bounded over to the telephone.

  ‘Elsie Finch, who are you phoning at this ungodly hour?’ Violet demanded, her voice laboured, each word seemingly dragged out of her voice box.

  ‘Eleven Group—they’ll have a log of past bombing raids.’

  The call was eventually answered and, after a lengthy explanation to two different operators, Elsie was finally given the answer that she was looking for. She reset the receiver and sat back down opposite Violet. ‘Derby.’

  ‘Derby?’ Violet repeated.

  ‘Derby,’ Elsie confirmed, shoving the log books to one side and taking a close look at the map. She prodded Derby, in the north of England. She frowned at Violet. It was a town of insignificance. ‘Why Derby?’

  ‘It’s odd, given how close Manchester, Birmingham and Nottingham are—blind-bombing those major cities would cause significantly more damage than to Derby,’ Violet said.

  ‘There must be something there…’ Elsie mumbled. ‘But what?’

  ‘I think it’s time to move from the Unintelligent Office to the Intelligent Office,’ Violet said with a laugh. ‘Let me finish my coffee and cigarette first, though.’

  Elsie stood and waited, eager to get next door with their findings. But Violet, in her usual way, was making a real meal of the last breaths of her cigarette. When finally she stubbed it down into the glass ashtray on the table, she then finished her coffee, holding the cup high above her face for the last drips to trickle down onto her waiting tongue.

  ‘Now I’m ready.’

  They hurried out of the room and Elsie tapped lightly on the Intelligence Office door. A deep masculine voice told them to enter and they stepped into a cramped, cluttered room containing bookshelves brimming with files, two messy desks and a run of metal filing cabinets. The windowless walls were adorned with maps of various parts of the world.

  ‘Good gracious! What the dickens are you two still doing here?’ asked Flight Lieutenant Budge—or RKB, as he was known at the station.

  Beside him, poring over some document or other was the station’s new Administrative Officer, Jean Conan Doyle. She picked her glasses from the bridge of her nose and stared incredulously at the pair, then glanced up at the clock on the wall, then back to Elsie and Violet.

  ‘Daimler,’ Elsie explained.

  ‘You do realise it’s two o’clock in the morning and your shift ended twelve hours ago?’ Jean Conan Doyle stammered.

  Elsie nodded. ‘Yes, ma’am.’

  ‘Okay. What have you got?’ RKB asked.

  ‘Does anything of significance happen in Derby, sir?’ Violet asked.

  ‘Derby?’ RKB echoed in his strong Devonshire accent. He was a thin man in hi
s mid-thirties with dark hair greased over from a side-parting. His forehead furrowed briefly, then he said, ‘There’s a Rolls Royce factory there, I believe.’

  Elsie glanced sideways at Violet. That was it. Daimler was code for Rolls Royce. Simple.

  ‘Do they make military vehicles there, sir?’ Violet asked.

  ‘No—they make engines,’ he said. ‘Merlin engines for Spitfires and Hurricanes.’

  Elsie grinned, satisfied. It was only a tiny, fairly insignificant puzzle but they had just completed it. She explained in full detail all of their findings, which she knew, the moment that they were out of the door, would be whipped away by a dispatch rider to the mysterious intelligence analysts.

  Once finished, RKB smiled. ‘Well, you’ve certainly earned your forty-eight-hour passes, ladies. Well done—really, well done.’

  ‘Now—I must insist that you both go home and get some rest,’ Jean instructed.

  Elsie and Violet took their passes, said goodnight and left the building.

  Outside, the night-time was noisier and brighter than it should ever have been. The skies above the sleepy Kent village were alive, being under the main bombing corridor to London; a great pantomime was taking place above them. They walked home, almost entirely oblivious to the droning of the air raid siren, to the plethora of search lights, reaching like probing fingers into the night sky, to the barking of distant anti-aircraft guns, to the low drone of aircraft making their way back from dropping their bombs on the capital. And poor London! It had been pounded every night for the past two weeks.

  Violet slipped her arm through Elsie’s and they walked gingerly through the dark lanes towards their billet on the other side of the village.

  ‘You did well in there, Elsie Finch,’ Violet commended, squeezing her arm.

  ‘Team work,’ Elsie corrected.

  They walked without talking for some distance; the only sounds of the night were the sounds of war. Even the insects and animals didn’t bother to compete. Then Violet squeezed her arm again. ‘Forty-eight hours off!’ she said.