The Deep Secret

by David Robinson

  27

  Emerging from Bristol Temple Meads railway station into a grey September day, Julius paused to study the gaily-coloured poster for the Hippodrome. One or two minor acts, but there, right at the top of the bill, The Great Zepelli and Georgina. Graham Zepelli: His mentor and tormentor from the hell of Folshingham Hall, his great friend in the run up to the end of the war.

  How their fortunes had changed.

  Freddie Quarmby had warned him that life in Great Britain would not be easy, and he had not been mistaken.

  With over four hundred thousand prisoners of war to deal with, repatriation was a slow process, and it was late in 1946, before Julius’s case came up. After release from Folshingham Hall, he was relieved to learn that he would be permitted to stay in England, but the joy turn quickly to pessimism when he began to look for work. There were jobs; millions of them. But once the prospective employer learned he was German, the shutters came down. Even when he employed his perfect, classless English accent and secured work, some of it quite menial, he would eventually let his guard slip, someone would realise he was German, and he would be out of work again.

  And it was not just verbal abuse he had suffered. He had been living in Great Yarmouth and secured work on the pier for the summer season. Two of his colleagues learned of his origins and that evening, as he walked back to his digs, he was waylaid and badly beaten. After two days in hospital, he returned to the pier to learn that he had been dismissed and his job given to a middle-aged Englishman.

  “We don’t want you Bosch bastards taking jobs off decent English lads,” the manager had told him.

  A complaint to the police was all but ignored. The constable at the police station took the details, but as soon as Julius told him his name, the officer lost all interest.

  Matters became worse when the horrors of the concentration camps broke in the world’s press. Then even the Jews, the gypsies, and the secretive homosexuals, people with whom he had been able to at least converse, turned upon him. Before the master’s intervention, Hitler had persuaded him that the Jews and gypsies were subhuman, but here he was the Untermensch.

  It was the same wherever he went. In the crowded streets of London, where there was work aplenty, he found the same discrimination in both accommodation and employment. He spent many a night in Salvation Army hostels, his thoughts turning back to those pleasant, decadent days of the early 1930s when he and his master led the good life in the beautiful city of Heidelberg.

  He longed to go back there, but he dared not. Not yet. He was often tempted to approach the West German Embassy and ask for repatriation, but it was out of the question. One day, perhaps, when his people put aside their pain, their shame, he may return, but six years was not long enough for them to forget those guilty of treason.

  Since the end of the war, he had trawled practically the whole of the south of England seeking permanent work, no matter how petty, and a place he could call home. Stepping out of the magnificent railway station, a tribute to Brunel’s engineering and architectural genius, into the heart of Bristol, he was desperate: desperate, hungry and homeless. Graham Burke, The Great Zepelli, was his last hope.

  ***

  Zepelli arrived outside the theatre by taxi, his blonde wife alongside him, and he was delighted to see his old friend. Instead of going into the theatre, he brought Julius to the cafeteria just along the parade, and when Julius admitted he was ‘financially embarrassed’, Zepelli bought the coffee, and they reminisced over their days at Folshingham Hall.

  At length, Georgina got up to visit the ladies, and as she disappeared, Julius remarked, “She is a beautiful young woman, Graham. You are a very lucky man.”

  “Met her right here in Bristol, back in ’49.” He chuckled lasciviously. “You’d never believe how long it took me to get her clouts off.”

  Lost in the idiom, Julius frowned. “Clouts?”

  Zepelli kept his voice low. “Trolleys. Drawers, her knickers. God, it was months before she’d let me do any more than kiss her.”

  “And yet you remained patient.”

  “Had to, me old sparrer. Not a common little tart, isn’t our Georgie.” He grinned.

  “You did not use The Deep Secret upon her.”

  Zepelli laughed louder this time. “You and your bloody Deep Secret. Your hypnotic cocktail works, sure, but I’ve never yet found The Deep Secret any use. No, she was worth the wait, was Georgina. She is a fantastic woman.” Zepelli drank his coffee. “Enough about me. How are you?”

  “Life, I’m afraid, has not been so kind to me, Graham.” Staring into his coffee, he suddenly looked up. “I have not eaten for two days.”

  Zepelli was shocked. As Georgina returned, he said, “We’ll soon put that right.”

  Leaving his wife and Julius to chat about the weather, he went to the counter, and returned a minute or two later, with fresh coffee and a couple of bacon rolls for his wartime friend.

  “Well, my old china,” Zepelli said, conversationally, “it’s certainly a surprise seeing you here.”

  Julius did not answer immediately. He was too busy eating, filling his wasted stomach with the cheap food.

  When he had swallowed the last mouthful and washed it down with a large gulp of milky coffee, he accepted a cigarette from Zepelli and, lighting up, he drew the smoke gratefully into his lungs. It made him feel light-headed, but he did not care. The bite of tobacco felt so good.

  “You have no idea, Graham, how much courage it took for me to come here.”

  Zepelli ran a grim eye over Julius’s appearance. “So things are not going too well?”

  “Your commandant, Colonel Quarmby, he warned me that life would be difficult for me after I decided to remain here in England, but I did not realise just how difficult. I have never managed to hold down a job for longer than a couple of months. The moment people realise I am German, I am dismissed.”

  At the mention of his nationality, two people stared at him. A third, a man dressed in the dark blue bib and brace overalls of the local authority, stood and came towards them.

  “You can hardly blame ’em, Julius. A lot of boys died in those six years.”

  “But I helped the Allies, Graham.”

  The workman towered over them. “Here, you. Kraut. Why don’t you fuck off—”

  Zepelli rounded on the workman. “You swear like that in front of my wife again and I won’t be responsible.”

  “I’m talking to him.”

  Zepelli stood. He was several inches taller than the labourer. “This man is with me, and I don’t care where he comes from. You pick on him, you’re picking on me, and I’ll tell you something, shorty, I dealt with blokes like you during the war. Tough guys. German, French, Italian, and American. I crossed ’em all, and you start with me, I’ll mop the bloody floor with you. Now, clear off.”

  Zepelli sat down again and the workman went on his way, chuntering to himself about Nazi lovers. Another two people finished their food and drink and left the café.

  “This is how it is, Graham,” Julius said as the proprietor came from behind his counter. “You know, when the war was officially over, I offered my services to the Allied interrogators. They had many Germans to interview, to put on trial, even, and I thought my special talents would be of use to them, but…” He trailed off with a world-weary shrug. “They wanted policemen and lawyers, not a man skilled at breaking down resistance through hypnosis.”

  “The law,” Zepelli ruminated. “They need the evidence voluntary, mate, and hypnotism isn’t voluntary… at least, not your kinda hypnotism.”

  Insinuating himself between Zepelli and Georgina, the proprietor leaned over them. “Mr Zepelli, sir, I like having you eating at my place. It brings in the customers when I tell them The Great Zepelli likes his morning coffee here, but with the best will in the world, your, er, guest is costing me custom.”

  Zepelli looked at the proprietor and smiled. “Where were you on D-Day, Arnold?”

  “Right here,�
� said Arnold. “I did my bit back in 14-18.”

  “Do you know where Julius was?”

  Arnold shrugged.

  “He was with me, doing his bit to make sure the Allies secured the beach heads in Normandy. He may be German, but he’s not a Nazi and he never was.”

  Arnold’s head bowed and he returned to his counter.

  Julius leaned forward and kept his voice to a whisper. “That is not true, Graham. We were both at Folshingham Hall. We did not go to Normandy until after the Allies had begun to advance inland.”

  “He doesn’t know that, and neither does anyone else, aside from Colonel Quarmby and Captain Stokes. Now come on, Julius, what is it you want?”

  Julius shrank back into his worn clothing. “I have no wish to beg. I had enough of that when I was a child in Munich and Heidelberg. So I am asking, not begging, for work and a roof over my head. I am prepared to do anything. I will sweep the floor and clean the latrines if I have to. Anything at all.”

  “Times are tough, Julius. I don’t own the theatre, and I have all the back room crew I need. I could find you something, I’m sure, but I don’t know how long it would last.”

  “All I ask is work and shelter. If you can arrange it, I have something I can trade.”

  Zepelli’s eyes lit up. “And what might that be?”

  “Ideas you can use in your hypnotism act. Comic ideas, and ideas with something more, er, serious behind them.” Julius gave a wan smile. “Ideas that will see you make a great deal of money, Graham.”

  Zepelli’s face split into a broad grin. “That’s my kinda talk. And what will you expect out of it?”

  “A percentage. I am not greedy. You saved me from the firing squad in 1944, you have just saved me from another beating, you saved me from being ejected from this cafe, you have fed me. I am in your debt. I should say it’s the least I can do for you.”

  “Come on. Drink up. Let’s see what we can sort out.”

  28

  Croft was surprised when Millie had to hand in her weapon as they entered the prison, but she was not.

  “It’s an SSU: a Special Secure Unit. This place houses some of the most dangerous men in the country,” she explained as they were escorted to the governor’s office. “Imagine what they could do if a group of them overpowered us and took the weapon. It’s safer to leave it at reception.”

  After leaving Scarbeck just after ten, the eighty-mile journey had taken a total of three and a quarter hours, but only because Croft insisted they drive into Nottingham so they could take lunch at a civilised restaurant rather than a snack on the motorway.

  “I don’t object to pub grub, as you know,” he had told her over a cold meat salad from the restaurant’s carvery, “but I will not eat the plastic garbage they serve on motorways.”

  From there, they had to drive back out of the city on the Derby Road, and on the peripheral highways in the semi-rural outskirts of the city, to the citadel of HM Prison Hattersley.

  Like Ringley, the place was surrounded by high, sheer walls, with extensive CCTV covering the outer perimeter. Also like Ringley, there were booking-in procedures, but they were much more complex and severe than the remand centre and, notwithstanding Millie’s official capacity, they included a demand that they read the warnings on contraband materials, weapons and firearms.

  Once through those, following a senior warder, they passed through gate after gate, all of them doubled up, the inner not opened until the outer was closed and locked behind them, and along barren corridors, the shiny composition floor smelling of cleaner and polish, the rap of their heels echoing through the empty halls.

  Shown into Governor Steven Inksip’s more comfortable office, they found him a man beset with woes, which he was quite eager to spell out over a cup of tea. Aged somewhere in his mid-forties, tall, spreading a little at the waist, but still sporting an unruly mop of dark brown hair, Croft guessed he had once carried himself as impressively as his warders: tall, square-shouldered, and intimidating. The years had taken their toll on his physical appearance and, judging from the bags under his eyes, the last few days had drained him of mental energy.

  “This job can drive you round the bend at the best of times,” he told them. “It’s a constant round of staff complaints, inmate complaints, Home Office directives, and inspection reports. I spend half my time disciplining inmates, another portion of my day advising or warning staff, and the rest of the time filling in silly bloody forms so the government can gloat over its excellent record, and the opposition can protest at the government’s rubbish record.”

  Croft understood at once. His years as the head of the Department of Parapsychology at UNWE, before he left for the Canary Islands, had been a similar minefield of administration. “So the last thing you needed was something like this.”

  “The Home Office inquiry has already begun. Not that it will get them anywhere. I’ve checked, double-checked and triple-checked. My officers followed procedure to the letter.” Inskip faced Millie with a deep sigh. “So what can I do for you, Inspector? Your people told me you have carte blanche anywhere in the country, and the Home Office has insisted I co-operate in any way I can.”

  “For a start off, Governor, we’re not here to blame,” Millie advised him. “The whys and wherefores of Burke’s escape will no doubt be investigated sometime in the future, and we’re not interested in what happened on Sunday night. I take it you’ve seen today’s news?”

  “Burke killed? Yes, I’ve seen it. I’ll believe it when it’s been independently confirmed.”

  Millie grimaced “Our Chief Constable should have confirmed it officially on the television as we left Scarbeck, but if you haven’t been made aware of it, I can give you the bottom line now. Burke’s accomplice murdered him shortly after their attack on the Sinclairs’ home in Warrington, and the subsequent killings in Northwich, Nantwich and Wolverhampton are probably the work of that same accomplice.”

  Inskip tutted. “Another lunatic.”

  “It’s the pursuit of the accomplice which has brought us here.” Croft told him. “We’re convinced that he met with Burke while he was imprisoned here, so we need to know about any friendships or acquaintanceships he may have made; any inmates with whom he mixed more than others.”

  The governor shook his head. “None. He was a loner. Segregated for his own safety under rule forty-five…”

  “Pardon me,” Croft interrupted. “Rule forty-five?”

  “It used to be rule forty-three,” Inskip sighed. “Some categories of offender are kept in isolation for their own safety. Burke was a sex offender, you see, and your average, run of the mill bank robber doesn’t like sex offenders. They’d have cut his cock off… forgive me, Inspector. They’d have castrated him.”

  Millie ignored the lapse into the working-class vernacular from which Inskip had obviously come. “Regular visitors, then?”

  “Only one,” Inskip insisted. He checked the file. “William T Harper. A solicitor.”

  Millie seized on the information. “He’s the man we’re particularly interested in. Were Harper’s bona fides checked?”

  “No,” Inskip admitted. “ID check, of course. Everyone is subject to an ID check, and he presented…” Inskip checked the file again. “Presented his passport.” He looked up. “Harper wasn’t a criminal lawyer. He was handling a civil matter for Burke, as we understand it, so there was no question of confidentiality as such, and he was quite open about the business. He’d had a request for access to a manuscript which Burke kept in a bank in Bristol. He visited Burke several times and eventually Burke sent him with a letter of authority for the bank to hand over the manuscript.” Inskip dipped into the file again and came out with a barely legible photocopy and passed it to Millie.

  She read it then handed it to Croft.

  To the Bristol St Paul Branch, Somerset and Western Bank, please furnish Mr William T Harper, Solicitor, Commissioner for Oaths, with the contents of safety deposit box 164353. And oblige. Yours
faithfully, Gerald Burke.

  “All documents other than privileged information between a solicitor and his client are routinely checked,” Inskip was saying. “Harper offered that to the supervising officers quite voluntarily to demonstrate that everything was open and above board. As far as we’re concerned, there was nothing amiss.”

  Croft and Millie exchange glances. “You mean you haven’t been told?” Croft asked. “Harper wasn’t a lawyer. His identity and address are faked.”

  The colour drained from Inskip’s face. “What? That’s impossible. The passport—”

  “Probably stolen,” Millie interrupted, “and faked up with Harper’s photograph. Not difficult if you have the right contacts.”

  As a son of one of the country’s most powerful and influential families, Croft felt some sympathy for the man opposite. He knew only too well how vital scapegoats were for these matters and he was looking at the easiest such scapegoat.

  “Burke was of high intelligence,” he announced. “He knew the value of the innocuous. The instruction to his bank was one step in a process that would lead to first his escape, then his murder and finally, the trail of violence we’re seeing right now. Their purpose was to retrieve that manuscript and send it to me so that I could decipher a hidden message within it.”

  “But… but…” The dumfounded Inskip ran a hand through his shaggy hair. A gleam of hope lit in his eyes. “The address. Surely your people will have checked Harper’s address, Inspector? And he must have received the authorisation there.”

  “A café in Bath, sir.” Millie reported. “Avon and Somerset police have told us that Harper used it has an accommodation address, and called in to collect his mail now and then.”

  “Oh, my God.”

  Croft made an effort to reassure him. “As far as I’m concerned, Governor, neither you nor any of your staff are to blame for this.”

  “Dunno that the Home Office will see it like that,” Millie said. “However, none of this is any of our concern, sir. Our chief objective is to get a line on William Harper, whom we are fairly certain, is our killer. Tell me, do you have CCTV coverage of visits?”