Skinner screwed up his face. ‘Worse. One man runs the show there—a civilian.’
‘Oh dear. And what happens to the intelligence once it’s been intercepted?’
‘The chap at Dingli telephones through to the Port W/T Officer at Valletta.’
‘Right. Then what?’
‘Then the message is written down and a runner sends it to the controller of the Operations Room.’
Elsie grimaced. The operations on the island were worse than the early days at Hawkinge. It was little wonder that so many enemy raiders were attacking the island without any recourse. ‘Do you have any of your log books from the past few days that I could look at?’
Skinner jumped up and headed to the only other item of furniture in the room—a metal filing cabinet. He pulled open the two doors and Elsie caught sight of an assortment of jumbled files, notebooks and ledgers. Skinner ran his finger along the run of haphazard material, then pulled at something which caused an avalanche of paperwork to tumble to the floor. ‘Damn it,’ he mumbled, turning towards Elsie with a notebook. ‘Here’s my logs from the last couple of days.’
She took the book and, holding it beneath the lamplight, began to read. Behind her, Skinner was groping around on the floor, picking up the loose papers.
Elsie immediately recognised code words and familiar Luftwaffe units that had been moved from bases in northern France out to Sicily. As she read on, she was struck by an odd sensation of warm familiarity, as if learning something of an old friend.
Skinner returned. ‘Do you mind if I carry on?’
‘Go ahead, absolutely.’
Skinner placed his headset on and began making tiny movements of the dial on the set in front of him, whilst Elsie read on through the logs. The only sound to be heard in the room was the distant howling of the siren.
The hour passed quickly, if it had even been that long. Shorter returned with a dramatic bursting open of the door. Inside, Elsie had jumped, but was determined not to show it. She looked up nonchalantly from her reading, her eyes meeting his for a brief moment, before falling back to the page in front of her.
‘Time to go,’ he said.
‘I need to visit the Royal Navy Station at Dingli,’ Elsie answered, closing the log book.
‘Impossible. I’ve got to get back. Do as you please tomorrow and thereafter—just keep out of the way.’
Elsie turned to Skinner and shook his hand. ‘Thank you very much—you’ve been really helpful.’
She followed Shorter out of the building, knowing that she was going to have her work cut out on the island. She shielded her eyes from the brightness of the day as they walked over to the Austin.
Under the shrill of the air raid siren that had continued throughout her time in the intercept room, Elsie thought that she heard the low drone of an aircraft. Squinting into the harsh sky, she searched for it. ‘What’s that noise?’
Shorter waved his hand dismissively. ‘Listen—I know this isn’t the lovely peaceful quiet Kentish countryside, but you’re going to have to learn to switch the sounds of sirens and kites off or you’ll never get anything done,’ he lectured as they reached the Austin. ‘I don’t even hear the sirens anymore.’
‘Get down!’ Elsie yelled, shoving Shorter to the floor violently, just as a lone Messerschmitt 109 zoomed low overhead, opening up his machine guns.
Elsie covered her head as the bullets ripped through the sandy soil exactly where they had just been standing.
Seconds later and the plane was just a blemish on the horizon.
‘Maybe you should start to hear the sirens, sir,’ Elsie said, picking herself up and brushing the dust from her uniform.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Morton opened his eyes, thankful that the migraine had, at some point during the night, removed its claws from his brain. He had returned home yesterday from Folkestone Library and crawled into bed with only a short passing conversation with Juliette, so desperate had he been for sleep to anesthetise his agonised head.
He sat up slowly and looked at the empty space beside him. Juliette had left a note on her pillow. Hope your head is better soon. Be good xx
He tried to stand but promptly slumped backwards onto the bed. He felt hung over. Ordinarily, he would have taken the day off but the wedding was in three days’ time, which meant that he had just two days to wrap up and solve the Finch Case. Not very likely, since he had yet to achieve a significant part of his task in discovering the identity of Barbara Finch’s father.
He hauled himself up and staggered over to the door. He was certain that, after a few large coffees, he would be able to get going again on the case. Downstairs, he found the energy to make a drink and some breakfast. After some time resting his head in the crook of his elbow, he felt life returning to his body, like blood flowing back into a numb limb.
He made himself another strong coffee and slowly made his way to the study at the top of the house.
Setting the cup down beside his laptop, he turned to the wall of evidence behind him. It was time.
Unhurriedly, he began to unstick every piece of evidence pertaining to his own family tree investigations. All the vital records, copies of letters and emails, all removed and stacked in a neat pile ready to take to America.
The vacant wall in front of him both saddened and pleased him. He turned his attention to his notepad and the folder bulging with paperwork concerning the Finch Case and knew what he had to do.
Morton spent the next hour sticking everything onto the empty wall. Suddenly his befuddled brain could make sense of the case as a whole. It was as if he could now see the straight edges of the jigsaw puzzle, leaving just the centre to be assembled. At the very bottom of the wall, just above the skirting board, he began to painstakingly create a timeline of events.
With a clear mind, he took a sip of his drink, then started up his laptop. The first thing that he wanted to do was to check Ancestry for an update on the three DNA tests. It was a fairly pointless exercise; Ancestry would have sent him a notification email were the results ready. He logged in and checked his DNA page anyway. The answer was the same for each test. Lab Processing. The results of the tests were imminent.
Next, he switched his attention to the illegitimate children born at Cliff House during the war. There had been five of them recorded in the baptism register of St Mary’s Church, Capel-le-Ferne.
Henry, son of Gwendoline Boxall
Richard Peter, son of Kath Finch
Sarah, daughter of Freda Hilder
Elizabeth, daughter of Ivy Starr
Samuel John, son of Phyllis Butcher
Knowing that all of the children were born in the 1940s, Morton began to search for each of them in turn in the 1916-2005 marriage index and the 1916-2007 death index.
He searched for a great deal of time, producing a long list of potential marriages or deaths for each child. Yet, by the time that he had finished, he felt entirely dissatisfied. He didn’t feel that a single entry that he had found, matched those children. There wasn’t one certificate on which he was prepared to spend money. The names were slightly wrong, or the registration districts were the other side of the country, or the age at death was considerably out. Those were usual genealogical conundrums, but not to be able to find a definite match for one of the five children born at Cliff House made him suspicious. There was another alternative, of course. It was one that he had begun to suspect yesterday in Folkestone Library: that all of those children had gone down the same route as Barbara Finch and had been adopted. If that were the case, then his research into them was completely over since adoption records were not in the public domain.
He switched lines of enquiry and wrote a reply to Barbara’s email, explaining that Elsie could not have named her cottage Valletta because of her honeymoon there, as it had been so named months prior to her marriage. He asked Barbara to contact Paul and Rose once more to see if they had any other suggestions to offer. Then he sent another, more pleading email to
the journalist, Liu Chai.
Clutching his coffee, Morton moved to the evidence wall and began to meticulously re-read everything.
He paused part-way through Doris Sloan’s Mass Observation reports. Mr Wren’s house was hit and a pilot was killed. I saw him passing my house in his uniform, poor blighter. More dead in Folkestone and Dover. When will it end?
It was dated May 1941 and, in his mind, the pilot mentioned could have referred to Daniel Winter. What were the chances of another pilot turning up dead in the area like that? It still bothered Morton greatly that Daniel had died just hours after storming out of Susan’s house, having learnt that Elsie had given birth at Cliff House.
Returning to his laptop, Morton typed Doris Sloan’s address into Google maps. Her house was the neighbouring property to Cliff House. An idea was forming in his mind but Morton needed to know where Mr Wren’s house was—the place where Daniel’s body had been found. Turning back to the 1939 Identity Card Register, he entered the name ‘Wren’ residing in ‘Capel-le-Ferne’ and found his address: Heron’s Brook, which Google maps placed as the other adjacent property to Doris Sloan. It could well have been as innocent as purported, that Daniel had passed by Doris’s house on his way to Heron’s Brook, where he was accidently killed when a bomb hit the house. But if that had been the case, then why didn’t Doris Sloan name Daniel? She had known him from the early years of the war. Could it have been that Daniel had walked past her property in the other direction, heading for Cliff House and not Heron’s Brook and Doris only saw him from behind? It was tenuous, to say the very least.
Morton recalled a past case that he had worked on involving a death in the Second World War. He remembered searching through a raft of Town Clerk’s Department Records, which listed all the bombing raids that had taken place in that town, with detail of destruction to buildings and injuries or deaths caused. It was worth a shot. He typed out a quick email to Folkestone Library, asking if such records existed for the town and, if so, would they mind searching for a report into the incident on the night of 19th May 1941. He had just clicked ‘send’ when his mobile rang. It was Barbara Finch’s home number.
‘Hello, Barbara,’ Morton answered.
‘Hello, yes, I’ve just got your email,’ she said. ‘I’ve been onto Rose again and she suggests that you go and see her stepfather and ask him for yourself. The only thing is—’
‘—Is he still alive, then?’ Morton interrupted.
‘Yes, he’s in a home, he has his ups and downs apparently. I’ve never met him—bit of a tricky one, really. Once I first made contact with Paul and Rose, they felt it best not to tell him about me.’
‘Oh, okay. So he doesn’t know you exist?’ Morton asked.
‘No. He’s old and sometimes gets confused,’ she replied. After a moment she added, ‘I think what it is, really, is that they didn’t want to taint their mother’s memory in his eyes. So listen, I’ve arranged for you to meet Rose outside his care home at ten o’clock tomorrow morning. Is that okay?’
‘Yes, great—thank you,’ Morton said. ‘Hopefully he can shed some light. Perhaps Elsie even told him some things about her time during the war.’
Barbara snorted. ‘Don’t be too sure. Paul and Rose have asked him several times over the years but I get the impression that Elsie didn’t talk to anyone about the war years, even her husband.’
Morton laughed. ‘Okay, well, it’s worth a shot.’ He thanked Barbara, ended the call, then returned to the evidence wall behind him.
His eyes settled on the timeline. He was still troubled by what had occurred on the day of Agnes’s death. Having been newly promoted to the rank of Squadron Officer, working out of RAF Bentley Priory, Elsie’s time in the WAAF had mysteriously come to an end.
Morton had tried searching for various combinations of Elsie’s name alongside the Women’s Auxiliary Air Force before, but now he tried searching for her under her various ranks.
When he searched for ‘Assistant Section Officer Finch,’ Google suggested a link to an article in the digitised Flight magazine 1909-2004. He clicked and waited.
Moments later, a scanned version of an edition, dated February 1942 loaded onscreen. The page was filled with a selection of photographs, mainly of pilots going about their business. He skimmed across, searching for whatever was on the page that Google felt had matched his search criteria. Then he spotted it. It was a photo of a WAAF lady, stepping down from a Sunderland seaplane, smiling for the camera. It was Elsie. Below her picture was the caption: ‘Assistant Section Officer Finch, returning from valuable work on the island.’
Morton knew from Elsie’s records that the island referred to had to be Malta but nowhere on the page was that actually mentioned. He clicked to view the page before and it became clear. The section was headed ‘Round the Clock with the RAF in Malta’ and the following two pages featured RAF personnel working on the island. Morton smiled at the image of Elsie. She looked happy and he imagined that it would be a lovely photo for Barbara, Paul and Rose to see. He printed both pages and carried them over to the evidence wall. As he attached the first page, his eyes were drawn to another photo on the page. It was of several pilots playing cards. The caption read ‘A relaxing game of bridge between sorties.’ The men were unnamed, yet one of them looked vaguely familiar, but he couldn’t put a name to his face.
Morton jumped back onto his laptop. The quality of the page was excellent and he was able to zoom into the pilot’s face. Yes, he had definitely seen him somewhere before. But where? He hurriedly took a screenshot of the pilot close up, printed it out then made a bee-line for Susan Stubbs’s photos. Sure enough, the man was in the group shot of pilots from 32 Squadron resting beside their Hurricanes in August 1940. Beside the photograph was a list of the pilot names. According to Susan Stubbs, this man was called Woody. Not a very helpful name for identification purposes, but it was a start.
He continued checking the remainder of the photographs on the wall, when he spotted something of interest in the photograph of Elsie and William Smith at the RAF dance in Hawkinge. He pushed his face close up to the black and white picture. Woody was at the back of the room near to the bar, looking on.
Morton’s mind began to race, ruminating on the possibility of Woody being Barbara’s father. What if the story that Elsie had given to the social worker was partly true? That she had met the baby’s father at the RAF dance, but, for some reason—perhaps to protect his identity—she had instead given the name of a dead pilot, knowing that he could not protest or deny it. That would explain, Morton thought, why Elsie had named her house Valletta—it was nothing to do with her second husband at all, but to do with something that had occurred on the island during the war—perhaps with Woody.
His mobile began to ring. An unidentified caller.
‘It’s Liu Chai,’ a voice said in a hushed tone. ‘We need to keep this very brief, Morton.’
‘Yes, that’s fine. I just want to know about Shaohao Chen—’
‘—Tell me what you think you know,’ Liu interrupted.
This wasn’t going to go well, Morton could tell; he needed to cut straight to the point. ‘In 2012 he was arrested for beating you up. He was given a fine. He was living at 62 Hanover Square—’
‘—Not living there—working there,’ Liu corrected in a low voice. ‘What’s at that address?’
‘I’ve no idea. I assumed it was residential.’
‘It’s not,’ Liu mumbled. ‘Why would he beat me up?’
Christ, this is going to be hard work, Morton thought. ‘I don’t know, that’s what I was hoping you were going to tell me.’
‘What’s my job?’
‘Journalist,’ Morton answered. Then he got it. ‘So you were writing a story on him, he got wind of it and beat you up? Is that right?’
‘What links together all the stories that I write?’ Liu probed.
Morton thought for a moment. ‘Injustice?’ he offered.
‘Right. Time’s up. Goodbye.�
��
‘Wait,’ Morton pleaded. ‘I think we can help each other.’
There was a pause on the other end of the line. ‘Go on.’
Ten minutes later Morton was replaying the conversation in his mind. Liu had said that the address given by Shaohao Chen held some significance, so Morton ran a search for 62 Hanover Square. It was the address for the UK arm of a Hague-approved Chinese orphanage. Morton worked his way through various pages of the company’s website. It appeared that the company—of which Shaohao Chen was a director—was an intermediary between Chinese orphanages and prospective adopters, operating since 1975.
Morton stared at the screen, his brain humming with activity, as he tried to bring together all the disparate strands of the Finch Case.
Finally, he felt like he was getting somewhere.
‘Look, I’m having to put people off,’ Tamara ranted down the phone. ‘What are you doing about Morton Farrier?’ She lifted the phone away when his hoarse laugh bellowed into her ear.
‘Biding my time,’ Shaohao Chen replied. ‘Biding my time.’
‘Yes, until when, exactly? This is getting ridiculous and is losing us money.’
‘He’s got a meeting in London lined up. With Liu Chai.’
‘What?’ Tamara gasped. ‘You need to stop that meeting from happening or we’re finished.’
Another laugh. ‘You worry too much, Tamara. I’m not going to let the meeting happen.’
She ended the call and threw her phone on the floor.
Chapter Twenty-Five
23rd January 1942, Valletta, Malta
Her first week on the island had been characterised by an incessant, seemingly random stream of bombing raids. They had ranged in ferocity from attacks by a lone Messerschmitt to giant swarms of several hundred Junkers 88s, attempting to obliterate the island’s ports and airfields; the lamentable air raid siren had unremittingly whined on like a broken record, as it became difficult to know when one air raid finished and another began. And that, she and Aileen concluded, as they stared down from the controller’s dais to the plotting table below, was the problem: the island was almost always on red alert because of the inadequacies in intelligence-gathering. The pathetic quantity of intercepts being collected at Dingli and Siggiewi suffered from an unacceptable delay in reaching this operations room, from where immediate defensive action could be taken. Elsie had paid a visit to the Royal Naval Station at Dingli and met there the only operator that they had—a dilly-dallying civilian who had sent all of his logs to the admiralty in Alexandria, leaving nothing for Elsie to analyse. She had remained there, monitoring and intercepting traffic for four days solid. She had slept there and eaten there, building up a detailed picture of the kinds of R/T traffic passing over the island. There was much to be done in the three weeks left before she and Aileen were due to leave.
The Spyglass File (The Forensic Genealogist Book 4) Page 26
