Direct Hit

by Mike Hollow

  The referee blew his whistle to mark half-time.

  “Good game so far, eh?” said Jago, a little more animated now as he turned to face Cradock. “We might beat you again – that’d be a turn up for the book.”

  “Oh, definitely, guv’nor,” said Cradock. He couldn’t think of an intelligent comment to make on the game, but hoped Jago would take this as the subdued silence of a fan watching his side losing.

  By the time play resumed for the second half he was already looking forward to going home. But then Tottenham equalized, and contrary to his expectations he felt a faint stirring of interest. Before long, the tables were turned, with a hat-trick for Tottenham’s Burgess. The score was now West Ham 1, Tottenham 4.

  Cradock checked his watch. It was ten to five: only about ten minutes to go.

  “Looks like your prediction might have been a bit premature, sir,” he said. The West Ham supporters in the east stand had gone quiet. On the South Bank terraces to their left, however, he could see Spurs fans celebrating, doing their best to make a creditable noise with their shouting and their rattles, despite their depleted numbers.

  He was beginning to think he might finally enjoy the occasion, when the roar of the supporters suddenly trailed off into silence.

  A murmur of sound seemed to come from below their shouting and melt it away, like news of a death spreading through a room. It was the eerie moan of an air-raid siren.

  Cradock turned to Jago.

  “Another false alarm, do you think?”

  Before Jago could answer, the referee blew three blasts on his whistle: he was stopping the game. There would be no more football today, and the evacuation of the stadium began.

  Cradock and Jago found themselves back on Priory Road, along with several hundred other spectators who had left the football ground with them. The way the crowd behaved seemed to be consistent with what they’d seen and heard reported over recent days and weeks. Many of those who spilled out of the exit gates started running immediately, fathers keeping a firm grip on sons as they sought safety. Others moved away into the neighbouring streets with less haste. Jago assumed these were the ones who had developed a more relaxed attitude over so many months of hearing alerts that proved harmless, and who hadn’t been shaken from it by the intermittent bombing of recent days. Just yesterday there had been a raid, but it hadn’t come as far north of the docks as this, so they probably thought there was no immediate danger.

  “Back to the station, sir?” said Cradock.

  “Yes, I think so,” said Jago. “There’ll be no buses running now the alert’s sounded, so we’ll have to go on foot, but we can cut through the back streets and take the shortest route possible. With any luck it’ll just be another false alarm.”

  They turned right into Castle Street, where uniformed constables and ARP wardens were directing the visiting Tottenham supporters to the nearest public shelters, then headed north past the main entrance to the football ground. Eventually they came to the turning Jago was looking for.

  “Right, follow me,” he said, turning left into St George’s Road. Cradock stayed close behind him: he knew the general direction in which they must head, but he didn’t know these streets as well as Jago did. He was glad it wasn’t dark yet.

  It was quieter now: most people here seemed to have taken shelter. They hurried along the deserted street and soon they were in Ham Park Road. As they entered it Cradock hesitated. A sound he had not heard before was filling the air. It was coming from behind him, from the south, down by the river and the docks. He turned to face it. In the first second there was nothing to explain the noise, but in the next he saw it. A swarm of aeroplanes was approaching, tiny shapes in the sky, too many to count. The low, pulsing drone of their engines grew steadily louder as they got nearer.

  He stepped into the road to get a better view. He knew his aircraft recognition skills weren’t up to much, but he recognized the distinctive outline of the Dornier bomber, the one they called the flying pencil, and he saw other large planes that he assumed must be bombers too. Scores of smaller, silvery shapes roamed the sky above them: fighters, he thought.

  “I don’t believe it,” he said. “There’s hundreds of them. Germans. How did they get through?”

  Jago looked up just as the first black dots began to tumble from the bombers and make their rushing descent to the earth. Then came the crump of explosions, and smoke billowing from somewhere in the region of the docks, a couple of miles away. It was bigger than the previous day’s raid, bigger than any they’d seen since the war started. And this time it wasn’t stopping at the docks. The planes were heading inland from the river, straight for them, leaving a trail of blasts that crept rapidly northwards. Before they could move, the dark shapes were above them.

  A deafening noise broke out immediately behind them. The two anti-aircraft guns in West Ham Park had opened fire. Shrapnel began to rain down on the road and the roofs of the nearby houses.

  “Watch out!” yelled Jago, dragging Cradock away by the arm. He glimpsed an archway over a pair of gates a few yards away and hauled Cradock into it. He pushed him down to the ground and dropped beside him.

  They heard the scream of the falling bombs, and felt the ground shake as they landed on nearby streets. Cradock peered out from the minimal shelter of the archway, then shrank back as the jagged blast of high explosives ripped through the evening air. A bomb had landed just a hundred yards or so down the road.

  “Should we try to get under cover, sir?” he shouted above the din. “There was a surface shelter back there.”

  “Not likely. I saw them being built. Death traps: just brick walls and a dirty great concrete roof on top, ready to crush you. You’ll never get me in one of them.”

  As the words left Jago’s lips he felt suddenly cold. There was a tension in his stomach that he recognized and fought to suppress.

  He shouted at Cradock.

  “Keep your head down, you fool.”

  “Yes, sir,” said Cradock, pressing himself deeper into the archway and wishing he had a tin helmet with him.

  The roar of the planes began to recede. Now the loudest sound they could hear was the clanging bells of fire engines. Acrid smoke began to drift across the street.

  Jago got to his feet, followed by Cradock. His heart was thumping in his chest. He breathed deeply to calm himself down, not daring to speak lest Cradock hear a tremor in his voice. He made a play of brushing the dust from his suit and wiping his shoes clean on the back of his trouser legs as he composed himself.

  “Is that yours, sir?” said Cradock.

  Jago followed his pointing finger and spotted a sad-looking object that was lying in the road at his feet. It was a hat. His hat, lost and crushed as he dived for cover. He picked it up and examined it with a brief sigh, then stuffed it onto his head. The fortunes of war, he thought. Now it would just have to be a battered survivor, like him. He turned to Cradock.

  “Right, my lad, it looks like they’re going, so we’d better hop it too. And next time you see the Luftwaffe coming for you, don’t stand gawping at them: hit the deck.”

  “Yes, sir,” said Cradock. He hadn’t been bombed before, and he hoped to make a better impression on the inspector if it happened again.

  “Where to now?” he added.

  “Back to the station. Looks like you can say goodbye to your evening off.”

  With a quick backward glance the men stumbled from the shelter of the archway and continued on their way to the police station. The war was now in their back yard. A long-buried anxiety began to claw its way back to the surface of Jago’s mind at the thought of what the night might bring. He felt haunted, and he recognized the ghosts.

  CHAPTER 4

  The pedals were heavy, and Billy could already feel sweat trickling down the small of his back. It was ten past nine, but the evening air was still holding out against the chill of night. His calf muscles tightened as he forced the juddering contraption forward.

  H
e was still struggling to cope with the shock. He felt ashamed and angry with himself for leaving his mum like that, for using his ARP duty as an excuse to abandon her, but he couldn’t face it. He didn’t know what to say or do to help her.

  He kicked down with one foot, then with the other, with rhythmic force, the only way he could find to quell the confusion in his head. Sorting that out would have to wait. He’d left the Boy Scouts when he started work two years ago, but their values were still engrained in him. He knew his duty must come first, and that was to get the message through to the control centre. He had to stay calm.

  He tried to think about something else, about better times. About the bike project.

  When they’d started, the idea had been exciting. Rob said he’d help him build one out of any old bits and pieces they could lay their hands on, and then they’d cycle down to Southend for days out. They would have done, too, if they hadn’t run out of time. But that was a year ago: now everything had changed. Southend was a Defence Area, and he’d heard the whole coast was sealed off, right up to King’s Lynn. No visitors allowed.

  Rob had changed too. Not fun to be with any more, more like a lodger than a brother. Billy didn’t understand why.

  He pushed at the pedals, straining to build up more speed. He wished he could have got the three-speed gears working and found some drop handlebars: these old sit-up-and-beg ones were useless.

  If it weren’t for the terrifying noise it would have been like riding through a ghost town. Normally on a Saturday night there’d be people out on the street, especially after a warm day like today. You’d see them having a chat, rolling in and out of the pubs, having a good time. But not tonight. The air was full of those throbbing engines, just like this afternoon. More bombers.

  He couldn’t believe they were coming back for a second go in the same day. The whistle of falling bombs that he could hear and the blasts that shook the ground as they landed seemed to be coming from everywhere between here and the river. Anyone with any sense would be in their shelters. He pictured his mum, huddled in the damp little Anderson shelter in their back yard where he’d left her, and muttered a hasty prayer for her towards the sky. He wasn’t sure it would be heard through this racket, even if there was someone there to hear it. The Luftwaffe certainly wouldn’t take any notice.

  Bombs were falling somewhere out of sight in the streets to his right, but Plaistow Road was clear, so he pressed on. The tall outline of the Railway Tavern loomed into view on his left. The pub and all the houses around it were dark, their blank, blacked-out windows like the closed eyes of a corpse. The whole street looked dead.

  In another year and a bit, Billy would be eighteen, old enough to go into any pub he chose and buy a drink. But he’d be old enough to be called up too. And unlike Rob, he wouldn’t be able to dodge it. The thought of going into the forces began to unsettle him again. He told himself to focus on the job in hand.

  He turned right into Corporation Street and immediately lurched into the gutter as a grey-painted requisitioned taxi cab with a ladder on its roof rattled past, hauling a trailer pump. In the same moment he saw why it was here: just down the street there were buildings blazing. The Auxiliary Fire Service men were already out of the cab and manhandling the pump into position.

  It was clear that more than one bomb had hit the street. Twice he had to get off his bike and haul it through the obstacles. He could see the school was still standing, but across the road shops and houses he’d known all his life were now ragged heaps of bricks, slates, and unidentifiable debris, spiked with blackened timbers snapped like matchsticks.

  He reached Manor Road and was able to cycle again until he was forced to make another detour, this time along the edge of the cemetery. In the shadows he could just make out the rows of gravestones. They all faced away from the road, as if finally turning their backs on the living. Billy remembered how it had felt when he was a kid, thinking of all those dead people lying just feet away. He tried to block the thought from his mind.

  He turned right as soon as he could, but then had to stop again. The greengrocer’s on the corner had taken a hit: it was just a slew of rubble spanning the road. Flames curled through the drifting smoke. He didn’t fancy climbing over the top of that, but there was a turning ahead. Maybe he could bypass the obstruction.

  Dragging the front wheel of his bike round, he headed off down a side street, then turned into another to try to find his way back. The street was darker than the one he’d just left: there were no fires here. He’d cycled half the length of it before he realized he was in Blenheim Street, and that was a dead end. He stopped. His shirt was soaked in sweat, and he felt so frustrated he wanted to kick something.

  He was about to turn back the way he’d come when he saw someone standing in the shadows at the far end of the street. A man, wearing overalls. He was gesturing with his arm, beckoning. He stepped into the road, and Billy could make out the large white letter W on the front of his black steel helmet: an air-raid warden.

  “Come over here, lad,” the man shouted. “What are you doing out in this?”

  Billy approached and pushed his arm forward so that the warden could see his armband.

  “ARP messenger,” he said. “I’ve got to get to Rainford Lane, to the control centre. I’ve got a message to deliver.”

  “Perfect,” said the warden. “Then you can take one for me too. Come over here.”

  He turned away and headed for a small black vehicle parked at the side of the road. Billy propped his bike with one pedal on the kerb and followed. It looked like a tradesman’s van, but there was no writing on the side. He thought maybe someone had abandoned it because of the raid, but then he made out the figure of the driver sitting in the cab.

  “You squeamish, son?” said the warden.

  “Course not,” said Billy.

  “Then take a quick look at this. It needs reporting.”

  The warden opened the offside cab door and motioned Billy towards it. The driver didn’t look up. Surely he can’t be sleeping through this racket, thought Billy. Perhaps he’d been caught by a blast and knocked out, or worse. He might need help. But the van looked undamaged: even the windscreen was intact. It definitely wasn’t a bomb that had stopped it.

  He peered into the cab. The warden switched on his hooded lamp and directed a little light over Billy’s shoulder.

  Now he could see the man clearly. He looked about fifty, and was dressed in a suit, so perhaps not a tradesman after all. He was sitting at the steering wheel, his head slumped forward slightly onto his chest. His hands hung limply in his lap.

  The next thing Billy saw made him gasp. It was the blood: on the man’s wrists, on his clothes, glistening in the lamplight.

  He turned back to the warden.

  “Is he –?”

  “As a doornail,” said the warden. “And I fancy it wasn’t the Germans’ work. We need to get the police here. As soon as you get down to the control centre, ring them up and tell them there’s been a suspicious death. Give them my name: Arthur Davies. Now get on your way.”

  Billy returned to his bike, his mind running through what he’d just witnessed. It was the first time he’d seen a dead body. The first time he’d had to call the police. He knew that was what you did if you found a body, but at the same time something about it didn’t make sense.

  There was no time to puzzle it out. He got on his bike and went back the way he’d come, away from the dead end. He still had to find a way round the blocked road. He tried another turning, and this time the road looked clear. He forced the bike up to what passed for speed again. The dead man’s face was fixed in his mind. Then, as if of its own will, his dad’s face seemed to float in and take its place. He tried to get them both out of his head, but they just got mixed up together.

  In the sky over East London the searchlights criss-crossed in search of the enemy. Billy glanced up at them, but couldn’t see any planes. He felt powerless, frustrated. It was then that the ange
r crept up on him again, grabbing at his throat, choking him. Inside his head he was raging at his dad for being a fool. He hated him. He hated the Germans. He hated the government. He hated the whole world. As he neared the control centre he was grateful for the smoke that cut into his eyes. It would give a reason for the tears that blurred his sight.

  CHAPTER 5

  Detective Inspector Jago peered ahead through the windscreen, scanning the road for hazards as best he could. It was past ten o’clock at night, but with so many buildings ablaze the darkness wasn’t the problem: it was the smoke swirling around the car like fog, masking familiar landmarks, that was giving him trouble. At times the vehicle’s masked headlamps could barely make out the white safety markings painted on the kerb. There were fire engines everywhere, their hoses snaking across the roads in all directions, further impeding progress for anyone else trying to get through. He leaned forward, his hand gripping the dashboard. He was beginning to regret letting Cradock drive, but he’d decided the boy needed the experience. He might have to do a journey like this on his own any time soon, and Jago wouldn’t trust him to find his way round the back streets of Plaistow in these conditions, especially when any landmarks he might know could be wiped off the map by a bomb at any moment.

  “Watch where you’re going, lad,” he snapped. “Look at the size of that hole in the road there.”

  Cradock sat hunched over the steering wheel, nosing the car forward.

  “Doing my best, guv’nor. It’s a bit tricky with all this going on.”