Strike a Match 3

by Frank Tayell

  “It’s that bad?” Mitchell asked. “It must be if they’re bringing down the Pennines garrison.”

  “It’s not good, Henry,” she said. “But the Marines are holding the line. The Channel Tunnel won’t be breached.”

  “I sent Ruth to Dover,” Mitchell said. “I thought she’d be safe there, surrounded by the Royal Navy.”

  “She will be,” Cavendish said. “Those bandits won’t get through the Channel Tunnel. In a few days, they’ll all be dead. No, focus on finding Adamovitch. Do you think he might still be in Scotland? Perhaps Pollock was trying to meet with him.”

  “Possibly,” Mitchell said. His mind turned to Ruth Deering, newly transferred to Dover, a city now on the front line. “You better drop us off at the first town we reach,” he said. “I need to have a proper word with Pollock, and if Adamovitch is in Scotland, I don’t want to have to travel all the way back here.”

  And once Adamovitch was caught, then Ruth would truly be safe. He could have her transferred far from Dover, and then, finally, his job would be done.

  Chapter 2 - The Dover Constabulary

  10th November, Dover

  “Close the door, you’re letting the heat out,” Police Sergeant Elspeth Kettering said.

  “I thought I heard thunder,” Ruth Deering said as she shut the door to the Dover police station. “But it was only artillery fire from Calais.”

  “Well, it won’t go on for much longer,” Kettering said, shuffling through the day’s paperwork. “Give it another few days, and they’ll have flushed those pirates back into the forests of France.”

  “You said that yesterday,” Ruth said. “You said it last week. In fact, you’ve said it every evening since those pirates attacked the garrison ten days ago.”

  “I must be right, then,” Kettering said. “You forgot to sign the interview log.”

  Following the arrest and trial of Emmitt, Ruth had been promoted to constable. Like all new constables, she’d been given a choice of assignment. She’d asked to be assigned to the Serious Crimes Unit in the hope that would see it reopened. It hadn’t. Instead, she’d been sent to Dover.

  Ruth walked over to the polished oak counter and signed the interview log.

  “That was a good collar,” Kettering said. “Jonah Craddock, caught with his hand in the coat pocket of a master tailor.”

  “If Craddock had thought to look around before he tried to rob her,” Ruth said, “or if she hadn’t been so absorbed in the delivery, it would never have happened.”

  “Then Craddock would only have gone on to rob someone else,” Kettering said. “And that might have been better for him. The cloth that tailor was unloading was for Marines’ uniforms.”

  “I thought they made them in Scotland,” Ruth said.

  “Do you wear the same uniform every day?” Kettering asked.

  “Well, yes,” Ruth said.

  “I meant you’ve got a spare, don’t you? There’s no laundry in Calais, but there’s plenty of mud, plenty of jagged rocks and splinters of metal to rip and tear cloth. The Marines can’t fight naked, and if the uniforms don’t get repaired, they might have to.”

  “No laundry,” Ruth murmured. “I never thought of that.”

  “War isn’t just about shooting bullets,” Kettering said.

  “Then it is a war?” Ruth asked.

  “It’s the closest to one that I’ve heard of in the last twenty years,” Kettering said.

  “The newspaper hasn’t printed much,” Ruth said.

  “No, I suppose they don’t want to worry people,” Kettering murmured. “Not that I agree with the notion. If they don’t print this story, then it makes me wonder what other stories they’re not telling us.”

  “Me, too,” Ruth said. “Before I caught Craddock, I was patrolling the dockside. There were two old sailors with three arms and two eyes between them, playing chess by the chandler’s yard.”

  “Matherson and Bramble,” Kettering said, automatically. “Matherson lost his arm and an eye in… let’s see… sixteen years ago, March 2023. They’d stuck a steam locomotive onto an old rubbish barge and were calling it a paddle steamer, right up until it blew up about a mile from shore. Bramble saved Matherson’s life. Now, Bramble lost his eye when he was part of an expedition down the Nile. He says it was plucked out by a golden dagger looted from one of the pharaohs’ tombs, but you should always take an old sailor’s stories with as many grains of salt as they’ve got flowing through their veins.”

  Before Ruth’s arrival in Dover, Elspeth Kettering had been the city’s only police officer. She’d fallen into the job shortly after the Blackout. While a few constables had come and quickly gone in the years since, the sergeant had remained. Kettering was the very definition of a local plod. She knew who lived behind which doors, as well as many of the secrets hidden behind their curtains.

  “Bramble and Matherson,” Ruth said. “They were saying how this wasn’t going to be over any time soon.”

  “And why did they think that?” Kettering asked.

  “Well, they said, that for the last twenty years, the Navy’s not done more than ferry expeditions along the coast. The only real action they’ve seen is to sink a few wooden sailing boats coming out of the pirate enclaves along the Mediterranean.”

  “I wouldn’t let any of the Marines hear you say that.”

  “I wasn’t going to,” Ruth said. “But they all talk as if they’ve got the same kind of ships they had before the Blackout, you know, the kind with missiles and helicopter decks. Not… not…”

  “Not floating artillery platforms?” Kettering said. “Well, maybe, but I’d say that since we can hear the artillery from here when the wind is in the right direction, the Navy’s guns are more than powerful enough to knock the pirates loose.”

  Dover was the home-harbour for the Channel fleet that patrolled the western European and North African coasts. It was a Navy city, but there were close to fifteen thousand civilians living inside Dover’s walls. Some tended the herds of dairy and beef cattle that kept the sailors fed. Others worked in the shipyard, the chandlers, or the steelworks. Then there were the shopkeepers, the telegraph operators, messengers, and railway workers, the teachers, doctors, and all the others needed to keep the engine of civilisation ticking along. Technically, all those civilians were subject to the same laws as in every other city. Sergeant Kettering, and latterly Ruth Deering, were there to enforce them. In practice, there were few crimes, and even fewer since the assault on Calais had begun. Those crimes that did occur were usually taken over by the military police, and at seven p.m. every evening, the M.Ps took over policing the city until seven a.m. the next day.

  The door opened, the bell jangled, and CPO Mordechai Rubenstein came in.

  “Smells like snow,” the chief said, pushing the door to. “Busy day?”

  “You’re early, Chief,” Kettering said.

  “What’s a few minutes between friends,” Rubenstein said. “Do you have anyone for me?”

  “Only the one,” Sergeant Kettering said. “Jonah Craddock. Caught picking the pocket of Carol Crane, master tailor.”

  “I know her,” Rubenstein said. “She’s got the contract for the officers’ dress uniforms. Talk about picking the wrong pocket.”

  Ruth smiled at the chief’s weak joke. It was part of their ritual. Each night, at seven p.m., the police cells would be emptied, and the prisoners taken to Dover Castle. In the morning, they would be taken before the judge and there given the chance to volunteer before they decided how to plead.

  Rubenstein signed his name at the bottom of the transfer sheet. Kettering signed hers, and Ruth fetched the prisoner.

  “Mr Craddock, a pleasure to meet you,” Rubenstein said. “You’ve a choice of twelve months or five years. Twelve months clearing rubble, or five years of sea air with money in your pocket and food in your gut. Something for you to think about. Evening to you, officers.” He marched the prisoner out of the station.

  “Twenty
minutes,” Kettering said. “And then we’re officially off duty.”

  Ruth went back to the desk to finish the paperwork.

  Dover was different to Twynham. Very different. The pickpocket was the highlight of the week. There had been a few drunk and disorderlies, a lost cat, and, since the fifth of November, a spate of invasion-scares that had all come to naught. In short, and aside from the battle raging thirty miles away in France, life was blissfully uneventful. Ruth was almost enjoying it.

  “Anything to watch out for tonight, Sarge?” Ruth asked as she signed her name on the last piece of the day’s paperwork.

  “Mrs Gunderlee’s cat may have gone missing,” Kettering said as she took her scarf from the hat stand.

  “Again?” Ruth asked.

  “It’s a cat,” Kettering said. “And I said may. Mrs Gunderlee was kind enough to give us advance warning. At some point around dawn, she’ll hammer on the door to let us know that the cat has safely returned, as it has done every night for the last six months. Otherwise, it should be quiet. Do you have any plans?”

  “I do,” Ruth said. “I’ve plans for a good book and an early night.”

  “Oh, come now,” Kettering said. “You’re too young to waste your evenings away indoors. Eloise and some of her friends are going to the old theatre tonight. They’re showing North by Northwest. You should go with them. It’s a good film.”

  Eloise was the sergeant’s eldest daughter. She was about Ruth’s age, was coming to the end of her apprenticeship in the city’s small coal power station, and was considering enlisting in the Navy.

  Dover, situated on the southeastern tip of Kent, the most southeastern county of England, was a city isolated and alone from the rest of the country. For years after the Blackout, Kent had been subject to raids from offshore pirates, making it unsafe for anyone to live out in the wilds. There were a few farms, of course, but the herds and farmers came into the towns at night. Folkestone was home to the garrison around the entrance to the Channel Tunnel, and the railway company maintained a few water-and-coal stops, but otherwise few people had made their home east of Hastings. Subsequently, Dover had its own small power plant, water treatment facility, and tall walls ringing the city.

  “Tell her thank you for the offer,” Ruth said. “But I’m really looking forward to my book.”

  “There will be people there,” Kettering said. “People your own age.”

  Ruth smiled, but didn’t reply. In many ways, the sergeant was much like Ruth’s own mother, at least after seven p.m., but Ruth wasn’t looking for friends. Not now, not after the last two months.

  “How many movies have they approved now?” Ruth asked.

  “North by Northwest is the thirtieth,” Kettering said. “The lawyers still say that unless it can be proven that all of the rights-holders died in the Blackout, the film can’t be shown. Reading between the lines of that newspaper piece, the judge was a real fan of Alfred Hitchcock, otherwise the exception wouldn’t have been made.”

  “If it’s only the thirtieth film, then it’ll be on for a while,” Ruth said. “I’ll see it closer to Christmas.”

  “If you’re sure,” Kettering said, in a tone that suggested that she disagreed. She pulled on her long coat. “Five minutes to seven. The military police will be on duty soon. I tell you what, why don’t you—” But before she could finish, the door opened, and a sailor ran in. She wasn’t in uniform, but a sodden PT kit.

  “You’ve… you’ve… you’ve got to come,” the sailor panted.

  “Where?” Kettering asked.

  “We were… were coming back from our run,” the sailor said. “A woman flagged us down. A landlady. She found a body. One of her tenants. He’s killed himself.”

  Chapter 3 - A Lonely Life

  Dover

  The carved-oak street sign said that it was New Hope Road. Whitewashed graffiti had turned the New into No, and Ruth thought the artist had the right of it. Even though it was silent now, the small-arms range was situated in the scrub between the back of the houses and the city’s northern wall. The wall was easy to spot. Electric-searchlights had been installed every twenty metres, and their beams now pierced the dark Kent countryside beyond.

  Ruth had visited the firing range, though she’d stuck to the target range rather then joining the Marines in the battle-drill exercises conducted in the bullet-pocked buildings. Even watching from the instructor’s observation platform, the noise had been intense. It was a constant barrage of bullet and shell that, she’d been told, was partly caused by an old-world sound system. That had been granted an exemption from the technology ban on the grounds no one told the Royal Navy what to do in Dover. What the sound must be like for the people who lived in this street, Ruth could only imagine. From the look of the houses, the residents had no option to move elsewhere.

  The old-world houses had been subdivided again and again. The nearest had the number 2F painted on the old metal garage doors, and that looked like the roomiest of the properties visible. Wood smoke and burned cabbage barely masked the smell of the outdoor toilets, yet there were no To-Let signs. There was no law requiring people to live inside the walls. There was no need. The last pirate raid, eighteen months ago, had resulted in the brutal death and mutilation of a family of dairy farmers and their entire herd. Even with Calais now blockaded, bombarded, and slowly being reduced to rubble, no one would risk going outside the walls after dark. Right now, they were staying inside their rented rooms, though threadbare curtains twitched as Ruth and Sergeant Kettering followed the sailor down the road.

  The victim’s house was almost at the very end of the street, clearly identifiable by the sailor standing at ease in the doorway, and the other sailor who stood by the gate next to an irate woman in a bright pink overcoat.

  Look at the shoes, Ruth thought. That was one of Mister Mitchell’s first lessons. Always begin with the shoes, and this woman’s were distinctly out of place. They were of that old-world shiny black plastic that almost looked like leather. Expensive, though not as expensive as having a new pair made. Showy, too, particularly on a street like this. The coat was heavy, even for this frosty November evening, but there was no hat on the woman’s head because that might have disturbed her big-haired ’do.

  The house outside of which she and the sailor stood had a whitewashed door. So did the houses either side and two of those opposite. Ruth pegged the woman as the landlady. The house was small, a three-bedroom that had been split into four judging by the numbers on the letterbox by the gate. However much the tenants were paying, it was far too much. Moss spilled from the blocked gutter until it met the ivy growing upward, strategically planted so that it would hide the gaping crack in the wall. Two of the front windows were broken. A third had been boarded up at least a year before. Ruth upgraded her first impression of the middle-aged landlady to slumlord.

  The sailor by the gate snapped his heels together and his hand to his forehead.

  “At ease,” Kettering said sternly.

  “Ah, finally,” the middle-aged woman said, in an accent that was English and overly prim. “Now you’re here, you can tell them to let me go. And I want to press charges for being illegally detained.”

  “Just a minute, ma’am,” Kettering said and turned to the sailor. “What’s going on?”

  “Well, I can tell you that,” the landlady said. “Mr Wilson’s dead. Shot himself. I flagged these sailors down, and now they won’t let me go home.”

  “And you are?” Kettering asked.

  “Mrs Dempsey,” the woman said. “I’m the owner of these properties.”

  “Of the five with the whitewashed doors?” Kettering asked.

  “That’s right,” Dempsey said. “And four cottages by the seafront. I’m a—”

  “And what time did you find the body?” Kettering interrupted.

  “At six o’clock,” Dempsey said. “When I should’ve been having my dinner. It’ll be ruined now.”

  Sergeant Kettering made a s
how of taking out her watch, checking the time, and marking it down in her notebook. “Does Mr Wilson have a first name?”

  “Noah, I think. Maybe Norman.”

  “I see. And why were you going to speak to Mr Wilson?” Kettering asked.

  “I wasn’t,” Dempsey said, “but his employer sent a messenger to me. He’d not shown up for work. They were worried. Worried he’d run off, I expect.”

  “And you were, too?” Kettering asked. “Is that why you came to check? You were worried he’d done a moonlight flit?”

  “It has been known to happen,” Dempsey said.

  Not in Dover, Ruth thought. Not when the gates were locked from dusk until dawn.

  “Where did he work?” Kettering asked.

  “Sprocket and Sprung,” Dempsey said. “For nineteen years, according to his employer when I asked for a reference. Now, can I go?”

  “Just a few minutes more, ma’am,” Kettering said. “How long has he been renting the room?”

  “Four months. His contract is for a year, mind you.”

  “I see,” Kettering said. She turned to the sailor. “And who are you?”

  “Lovett, seaman, first class,” the sailor snapped. “Off the Dauntless. We were on a training run. When we were hailed, I went into the cabin— I mean room, confirmed that the deceased was… um…” The sailor faltered. “Was deceased.” He finished. “I’ve left Williams guarding the room, and sent Merrick to alert you.”

  “Did you touch the body?”

  “No, ma’am,” Lovett said.

  “What about you?” the sergeant asked Mrs Dempsey.

  “I didn’t touch anything,” Dempsey said. “Didn’t even turn the light off, though I expect I’ll be the one picking up the bill. How long is this going to take?”