by John Harris
Pargeter blinked and seemed to summon up his reserves of imagination for an honest sustained effort that might produce a picture of what had happened. ‘Well, it was a bit messy,’ he said. ‘Spoiled my uniform and all that.’
Iremonger stared at him angrily, then decided there was no point in pursuing the matter. Pargeter would tell him in his own good time, and until then he’d have to grin and bear it. He pushed a message flimsy across.
‘Snowdrop patrol called,’ he said gruffly. ‘They’ve got a guy they think we could be interested in. Found him in a bombed out house, living rough. He’s a deserter from the Eighth Air Force. They say we’ve only to telephone and they’ll fetch us at once. Feel up to it?’
Pargeter seemed to have recovered his equanimity at last. ‘Oh, yes,’ he said, as though he were accepting an invitation to a party. ‘Let’s ring.’
The Provost car arrived within minutes.
‘Jesus, that’s fast,’ Iremonger said.
As they looked through the window, they saw a huge American open De Soto just pulling to a standstill and, as the doors opened, four white-helmeted military police swung on swivelling seats, to be all out of the car within a second, all holding their weapons at the ready.
‘Christ on a bicycle!’ Iremonger said.
He turned to look at Pargeter, who was wearing a small supercilious smile under his black eye. Iremonger glared at him. Then, grabbing for his cap, he plunged outside.
‘What in the name of the great jumping Jehosephat is this?’ he demanded of the lieutenant in charge.
‘Three Platoon, 4th Company–’
‘I said “what”? Not “who”! What in the great goddam was all that performance for?’
The lieutenant smiled. ‘Just a little thing I thought up, Colonel.’
‘And the swivel seats?’
‘For speed, Colonel. We exist for the apprehension of military criminals.’
Iremonger stared at him in amazement, aware of Pargeter standing just behind him.
‘What you’d call an exaggerated sense of security,’ Pargeter murmured. ‘Even when you people collect your regimental pay, you have a convoy of jeeps full of armed men. Our paymasters manage to do it with nothing but a briefcase and a bicycle.’
Iremonger glared and turned again to the lieutenant. ‘For Christ’s sake,’ he said, ‘you’re in Portsmouth, England, not Chicago, Illinois. If you go on like this you’ll have the British rolling round in the aisles laughing at you.’
They rode across the city in the back of the huge car, Iremonger faintly embarrassed and aware of the lieutenant’s stiff disapproval. At Provost headquarters the lieutenant led the way inside. In a small room guarded by two white-helmeted, white-spatted military policemen armed to the teeth, a small unshaven soldier with spectacles and wearing a mixture of uniform and civilian clothes sat huddled on a chair, watched intently by a sergeant, also armed to the teeth.
Iremonger stared at him. ‘You expecting this guy to fight his way outa here?’ he demanded.
The lieutenant’s nostrils went white. ‘No, Colonel,’ he said stiffly. ‘But he admits to murder.’
‘Does he now? Who of?’
‘A comrade, sir. Another deserter. A pansy like him. We’ve found the body just where he said it was.’
‘And you think this might be the guy we’re looking for?’
‘It could be, Colonel.’
‘Grow up, son.’ Iremonger turned away disgustedly. ‘The guy we’re looking for is a soldier.’
It was a statement that was full of contempt and, though neither of them bothered to verify it, they were both certain that the wretched shivering man in the cell, a technician with a history of homosexuality and neurosis drafted into the army against his will, could never have done the things they knew the Fox had done.
When they returned to Portsmouth, de Rezonville was waiting for them. He was sitting on Elizabeth Wint’s desk chatting to her, and he stood up, smiling.
Second Officer Wint pushed a signal flimsy across. ‘Your Polish unit,’ she said. ‘I found it. It’s now under training in Kent. They say they’ve never had an officer called Taddeus Kechinski on their strength.’
Iremonger scowled. ‘Oh, charming,’ he said. ‘Bloody charming!’
Another flimsy floated across the desk. ‘Also, a signal from Bushey Park. There will be no freezing of troop movements.’
Iremonger’s jaw dropped. ‘We haven’t asked anybody to freeze troop movements.’
Pargeter blinked. ‘I have,’ he said.
Iremonger stared at him. ‘You have? With the invasion imminent? Christ, you’ve got a nerve!’ He looked at Liz Wint. ‘Was it a signal?’
‘No, a telephone call. They were what you might call “rather formal”.’
‘I guess they were at that.’
De Rezonville smiled. ‘One other thing,’ he said. ‘The police at Southampton ’ave telephoned. They ’ave someone they think we might be interested in.’
‘Have you questioned him?’ Iremonger demanded.
De Rezonville shrugged. ‘I do not know what questions to ask,’ he said. ‘I do not know what we’re looking for.’
Iremonger jerked his head at Pargeter. ‘Come on, Cuthbert,’ he said. ‘This time, we’ll take our own transport.’
The man in Southampton, wearing the uniform of a British major, had aroused suspicions at an officers’ club where he’d been staying, because of his youth and the fact that he wore campaign decorations only an old soldier could have won. Instead of being a major, he turned out to be merely a sharp-witted second-lieutenant with a background of dubious enterprises as a civilian. His suitcase was found to be filled with nearly half a million clothing coupons.
‘Thinking of kitting yourself out?’ Pargeter asked dryly.
For a while nothing further happened. The results of Pargeter’s snap raids came in. A few deserters and men who had been absent without leave had been arrested, but nobody who couldn’t be firmly identified. Camp searches revealed nothing either, beyond a lot of missing equipment and two girls in the food store of an American unit in Devon. It seemed they had been there for two months, sleeping on army palliasses and eating unrationed food in return for services rendered to the cookhouse staff.
Iremonger scowled, frustrated. ‘Nothing but goddam petty criminals,’ he said.
He glanced at Pargeter, looking smooth and unruffled and urchin-like at his desk with his fading black eye. ‘Don’t you ever get impatient, you bastard?’ he demanded.
Pargeter shrugged. ‘For us, it’s been a long war.’
They had the photographs of Kechinski blown up in various sizes from blurred to fuzzy and studied them, trying to imprint his face on their minds; and for another twenty-four hours examined what evidence they had on him. But the Pole seemed to have no friends, no enemies, nothing; the sort of faceless figure that sinks into the background. They did discover from his last unit near Ringwood, however, that he’d been carrying on a sporadic affair with a Wren officer in Southampton, a pretty blonde girl who was none too willing to talk. In the end, she admitted the affair, somewhat shamefacedly because it seemed her friends had teased her that she was unwise to trust a Pole.
‘They were right, too,’ she agreed. ‘Because one of the other girls here knew him as well, and I knew there’d been a girl in London.’
‘When did you last see him?’ Pargeter asked.
‘Mid-April. About then. We were travelling on the train together. I was going to Brighton on pass. He got off at Chichester. He was going to see some friends, he said. Then I got a letter to say his unit was going further west somewhere and I’ve never heard another word from him, though I did hear he’d also been having an affair with a woman called Harvey in Lyme Regis.’
‘Would there be a photograph?’
Without a word she fished in her shoulder bag and produced a snapshot of herself with a grim-faced officer in uniform. ‘That’s him,’ she said bitterly. ‘Taddeus Kechinski. Tad
the Pole. He didn’t seem very pleased when it was taken.’
‘Can we keep it for a while?’
The Wren gave a wry smile. ‘You can keep it for ever,’ she said. ‘I don’t think it’s going to be much use to me now.’
They had the photograph blown up at the nearby RAF station at Boscombe Down and compared it with the one they’d obtained from Kechinski’s unit. It wasn’t much better, but the angle was different so it was one more small step in the right direction.
‘At least we know now how he looks from two angles,’ Iremonger said. ‘I wish we knew something about him.’
‘We know one thing,’ Pargeter pointed out.
‘What, for God’s sake?’
‘Women. He needs women. We know of seven he’s been with. He’s been married three times, and then there’s the girl in London, the Wren, the friend she mentioned, and now this woman in Lyme Regis. Perhaps it’s his Achilles’ heel.’
‘Having dames is an Achilles’ heel?’
‘He’s not been near his wife since 1939. That’s a long time for a married man to remain celibate. There are men who need women. Perhaps he’s one, and one of ’em might know where he is now.’
Six
The tall officer in the square-cut cap with the grey metal badge descended from the train at Chichester. As he left the station, the streets were full of uniforms – sailors from the landing craft filling the creeks of Chichester harbour; airmen from the neighbouring aerodromes of Goodwood, Tangmere and Ford; artillerymen manning the ack-ack batteries that held off the persistent German recce planes; and the infantry, tankmen and engineers gathering in enormous numbers in the Downs for the invasion.
The city had avoided much of the shabbiness of the war but after five years there was little in the shops and what there was, was heavily disguised as luxuries. There were a few people waiting at the bus stop but none of them looked twice at the officer. Men with strange uniforms had been a common sight in England since 1939.
The bus was already full when the Fox climbed aboard, pushing among the women carrying their shopping, the sailors and soldiers returning to their billets, and the few Americans who talked to everybody within reach on the understanding that silence on a public transport could only be bad manners. The bus lost a few of its passengers en route but it was still well filled as it rolled into Selsey. The place was quiet in the late evening, drab and ugly in its wartime dreariness.
It was a long way from dusk as the Fox started to walk out of the town. The roads were full of soldiers and their girl-friends walking arm-in-arm through the summer evening. Here and there, under trees, couples clutched each other in agonising embraces, aware of the unreality of life with the invasion and the possibility of dying just round the corner. When it was finally dark – and, with double British summer-time, he had to wait a long time for it – he headed back to the town. Halfway down the High Street he turned left into a road of indifferent houses, some occupied by soldiers, some empty. Keeping to the shadows of the tall macracarpa hedges, he slipped into an opening which had once contained a gate and, making his way through the neglected garden to the rear of the house, he took out a key and opened the back door. As he closed it behind him, a cutout switch on the jamb brought on the light and he stood blinking in a shabby kitchen giving on to a narrow hall. A man poked his head round the angle of the stairs; a small, pudgy man, pasty-faced with unhealthy violet sacs beneath his eyes. His hair was thin and plastered to his skull. He wore an old tweed jacket and a Fair Isle pullover, which had worn to a hole over his stomach.
‘Oh,’ he said. ‘It’s you.’ He gave a little snigger. ‘You get nervous, just waiting.’
The Fox began to speak in German but the little man made a warning gesture. ‘In English. You never know who’s listening.’
‘They don’t listen to you.’
‘No. But I’ve been here since 1933. Have you got something?’
‘Yes.’
‘The invasion?’
The Fox smiled. ‘Yes.’
‘What!’ The little man in the Fair Isle jumper grinned. ‘I don’t believe you! You’re doing well. You’ll have heard that Krafft made good use of that ammunition train in Essex that you found for him.’ He paused. ‘Too good. He blew himself up.’
‘He was always careless.’
The little man frowned and shrugged dismissively. ‘We’d better get on with it,’ he said.
Taking a torch from a shelf by the door, he began to climb the stairs, checking the blackout as he went. The house had a stale cabbage smell and the furniture was as shabby and uncared for as everything else. In the back bedroom the little man pushed the bed aside and, rolling back the worn carpet, raised one of the floorboards with a knife. More floorboards followed, and, by the light of the torch, he lifted two square attaché cases from between the joists and opened them. A coil of wire appeared which he unrolled and began to hook behind nails knocked at intervals into the picture rail, extending it through the door, along the landing and round the front bedroom.
Then, sitting on the floor, he pulled a morse key towards him and sat for a moment staring at the paper the Fox had handed him.
‘Where did you get this?’ he asked.
‘From the American I found at Abbotsbury.’
The little man read slowly. The Fox had made his message both clear and concise, but the little man went painstakingly through it a second time before putting on a pair of earphones and drawing the morse key nearer. Then he looked at his watch and started to tap out the letters of the address. The reply came at once and he began on the cipher groups of the message itself.
He had sent only the first few words, however, when his ears were filled with a sudden high-pitched howling that completely drowned the signal. For a moment, he sat listening. Then his eyes narrowed, and he cautiously began to tap again. Once more the howling came, now shatteringly loud in the surrounding stillness.
‘Jamming?’ the Fox asked and the little man nodded.
‘Have they jammed you before?’
‘No. Never. I got your message about the ammunition train through to Krafft without the slightest trouble.’
For a moment they looked at each other in silence. After two more attempts to transmit had each produced only the same immediate and ear-splitting reaction, they could no longer doubt what it meant. Quietly, without panic, the little man switched off the set and slowly began to uncoil the aerial.
‘They’ve found me,’ he said. ‘And whoever they are, they’re suspicious of what I’m sending.’
‘When can you send it? Tonight?’
‘Not a chance!’
‘Tomorrow?’
‘Not a hope. They’re on to me. I’ve suspected for some time that they’ve been watching this place. If I try to send they’ll take bearings on me and have me at once. I can’t risk that. I’ve got to clear out. Now that Krafft’s gone there’s only me left. You’ll have to find a different way of getting your stuff across the Channel. How about via Ireland?’
The Fox frowned. ‘There’s a communications ban on Ireland. The embassy in Dublin’s closed to us.’
‘Pity Krafft’s gone.’
‘What about his transmitter?’
‘No idea where it is.’
The Fox was deep in thought. He had long since considered the possibility of failure. ‘There is an alternative,’ he said. ‘Let me have the documents.’
The little man reached under the floorboards and pulled out an army file containing leave passes, railway warrants, movement orders and ration cards, and a set of rubber stamps. Selecting a railway warrant, a movement order form, identity card and ration book, the Fox began to fill them out, but not in the name that was printed on the name tag inside the collar of his mackintosh. He worked carefully, occasionally stopping to look at his watch and listen. When he’d finished, he looked up. ‘I’d better go,’ he said.
‘I’ll clear up here,’ the little man said. ‘Leave it to me. There’s plenty of time. I
’m sure they didn’t get the chance to put a direction finder on to me. How’re you going to get it across?’
The Fox smiled. ‘Take it myself,’ he said.
Seven
By the time Pargeter and Iremonger returned to Portsmouth it was dark and an air raid was in progress. There was a smell of burning in the air, and from down the street came the sound of fire engines grinding forward over the rubble in low gear.
Pargeter edged the jeep forward, the tyres crunching on broken glass as if they were driving over frozen puddles. Compared with the blitzes of 1940 and 1941 the raid had been a trivial affair, but people had been killed and houses destroyed. A small car had been thrown among the ruins of a wrecked building and a woman’s hat lay on a splintered door just behind it. By the light of the flames, they could see the all-too-familiar view of rooms, ready for living in but minus their front walls like a stage set. In some, by a trick of the blast, everything had been sucked out except the pictures, which still hung neatly and perfectly straight.
When they reached their headquarters, Sergeant Weinberger was sitting in the cellar with two of the British soldiers on the staff. It smelled of damp and mice but Weinberger had a bottle and they didn’t seem too downhearted.
‘Where’s Second Officer Wint?’ Iremonger demanded.
Weinberger shrugged. ‘She went off when she’d finished.’
‘And Lieutenant de Rezonville?’
Weinberger gave a small secretive smile. ‘He went with her, sir.’
Pargeter was pleased to see that it was Iremonger’s turn to look disconcerted. ‘That goddam Frog,’ he growled.
