Night Crossing

by Robert Ryan

  It was getting on for midnight, not far from Charing Cross, and the streets glistened with the evening’s spent rain. The West End was crowded with women like this, nearly all of them going for the Americans who could afford their rates. Competition was fierce. But ten pounds? It was double the going price, which usually included a breakfast of sorts.

  ‘Or by the hour,’ she said as he took a step towards her, his bad leg dragging slightly. ‘Or a short time down here, love.’ She pointed to the narrow alley, Two Brydges, a black slit in St Martin’s Lane, home, he knew, to one of the dives that served as movable card dens. If the operators changed the venue every night, then they couldn’t be charged with having premises used for habitual gambling. He peered down into the blackness. No sign of life.

  ‘Two quid,’ she said softly. ‘I guarantee you’ll leave with a smile on your face.’

  Ross hesitated, scratching the beard that he had grown to cover the kink in his jawline, aware of passers-by staring, knowing full well what sort of transaction was in progress. He pulled down his trilby and nodded his agreement.

  She led the way, her heels clacking on the paving stones. Ross tried to close his nose to the smell of ammonia that was bleeding from the lower parts of the walls. He watched her sashay in a manner designed to keep a client’s stare fixed on her rear, and marvelled at how effective it was.

  The alleyway widened out in the centre and it was here that they came for him, from a side passage that led out towards Trafalgar Square. They were big men, not tall, but beefy and they had him by his lapels against the wall in a flash. He felt the air explode from his lungs. One of them held an iron bar and danced from foot to foot, while the larger of the two kept an arm across Ross’s windpipe.

  ‘OK, mister, just relax. This won’t take a minute.’ He was American.

  ‘Hurry up, get it over with.’ No, they were Canadian.

  Hands were going through his pockets and lifting whatever they could find—his ration book, wallet, coins, watch—and Ross let himself go limp. He knew that if he struggled at all a tap on the head with a makeshift cosh would follow.

  His assailant stepped back, breathing hard. ‘There, that wasn’t too bad, was it?’

  As the police whistle sounded, one of the Canadians snapped his head round towards St Martin’s Lane and Ross got in a good solid punch that shoved it round even further. The man staggered back.

  The second Canadian raised the iron bar, thought better of it and spun round, straight into the arms of a uniformed PC. The alley was soon crammed with cops and the trio of muggers were bundled into a group, each with a pair of darbies around their wrists.

  As the handcuffs snapped shut the brunette turned to Ross and said: ‘I thought you were a snip. I could smell it. Even with the gammy leg. Should’ve trusted my instinct, shouldn’t I?’

  ‘You should’ve done a lot of things, my dear,’ Ross said evenly. He’d played up his limp to make himself seem more vulnerable. ‘Including thought twice about playing the badger game.’

  She managed a shrug as the three of them were led away to the paddy wagon waiting on the Strand. Ross bent down and picked up his belongings. The face of his watch was cracked. He wondered if a repair came under police expenses. At least it was still working. Gone midnight. He would have to go back to Bow Street, book the men, deposit the woman with a matron, one of the civilian searchers they employed—this one, like many of them, the station sergeant’s wife—then do the paperwork.

  The Canadians were deserters, of course. London was full of them, robbing post offices and banks, shoplifting in the understaffed stores, hijacking coal lorries to sell the precious fuel on the black market. This was the first gang they had come across using tarts as bait for robbery, however.

  Ross wangled a lift back to the station in one of the Flying Squad’s Railtons, the fast cars that finally meant the unit could live up to its name. The driver was a DS called Jakes, who had been wounded in the Norway campaign.

  ‘You all right, sir?’ he asked. ‘Not too roughed-up?’

  ‘No. Not really.’

  It was a good collar. The tart had been helping the deserters to roll customers for months in a ‘badger game’—the old term for having the pimp lie in wait to roll the mug. Nearly all of the victims had required hospitalisation, but only recently had a few managed to drum up the courage to put in a formal complaint and outline the scenario. Ross had drawn the short straw during the decoy-selection procedure, causing much merriment among his colleagues, most of which revolved around where his trousers would be when they arrived on the scene.

  Still, it was a proper case, better than the degrading ‘nancy boy’ patrols in Piccadilly that Vine Street station still ran, arresting some poor unfortunate, bringing him back for the ‘test’—rubbing his face with toilet paper to check for make-up—and searching for incriminating evidence such as a pot of Vaseline. If none were found, one would often be provided.

  ‘You on duty tomorrow, sir?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Any plans?’ asked Jakes.

  There was a lunchtime concert at the National Gallery that Ross wanted to attend, but it didn’t do to say that. He recalled the relentless taunting of the young ‘unnatural’, as the Section House had it, who had liked Ibsen and Milton and had left the force after two years, disillusioned. His former colleagues still arrested him for lewd acts whenever the opportunity arose.

  ‘Nothing firm,’ he said.

  ‘Well, you can have a lie-in, can’t you, sir?’

  Ross yawned, feeling the weariness in his bones. His idea of throwing himself into work to forget about Emma and Uli and his injuries had been sound, but it was taking its toll physically, simply because there weren’t enough coppers to go round these days. ‘Yes, Jakes, I think I will.’

  The phone in Ross’s flat rang at five minutes past seven. After filling in the forms and taking the statements, he hadn’t gone to bed till past three, and his eyes felt gummy and his head spun as he heaved himself from beneath the blankets and shuffled into the hallway, where the big chunk of black Bakelite sat on a small occasional table. Ross wondered if he shouldn’t move the telephone into the bedroom, as people only seemed to call him when he was asleep.

  ‘Museum two oh three seven,’ he mumbled as he put the receiver to his good ear.

  ‘Cameron.’ It was his Chief Inspector.

  ‘Sir.’

  ‘Bit of trouble in St John Street. That’s your neck of the woods, isn’t it?’

  About half a mile away. ‘Sir.’

  ‘Police constable requested senior assistance. Can’t do it from here. Take a look, will you?’

  ‘Of course. Right away.’

  ‘Need a driver?’

  ‘I can walk it, sir.’

  Ross hung up, returned to the bedroom and slumped back onto the bed. He counted to a hundred before he rolled off and limped towards the bathroom. His jaw ached. He had been bruxing again, grinding his teeth in his sleep, which apparently wasn’t good for his rebuilt mandible. Try to relax more, his maxillofacial consultant had suggested. Chance would be a fine thing. Had the Chief Inspector known it was his day off? Or did he just not care?

  Probably the latter, he decided as he squeezed the toothpaste out of its tube onto his toothbrush. It was nearly empty and he reminded himself that he must take the old tube along when he replaced it. The woman in the chemist’s had treated him like a Nazi-lover the last time, when he had admitted to having thrown the empty away. He found it hard to believe that the success of the Allies depended on him recycling his metal tube of Kolynos Dental Cream, but he supposed she’d had a point when she’d said that every little helped.

  Ross checked his face again. To a casual acquaintance he looked much like he had before the bombing, but he could see the lumps and bumps of the surgical reconstructions. He had asked, and been given, permission to grow a neat beard to hide the irregularity in his jawline.

  As he was brushing his hair flat, watching his
reflection in the hall mirror, the post fell onto the mat and he quickly checked the stack of letters. The one from his father was at the bottom. He hesitated for a moment, before deciding that he was doing just fine as he was. Ross binned it, unopened, before he left.

  The blast from the shotgun reverberated around St John Street, followed by the soft tinkling of glass. The shooter had blown out the window of one of the houses opposite. Ross risked looking out from the side street where he, together with the local constable—a tall, craggy man, one of the Guards inducted into the Met at the end of the last war and happy to stay a bobby—and the medical team of a driver and two young nurses were crouched. St John Street was empty but for the abandoned Morris ambulance, which had been shot at several times, its sides and roof peppered with holes, and a requisitioned taxi and its tender from the Auxiliary Fire Service, which had received the same attention.

  Ross turned to the ambulance driver. ‘He doesn’t want to go with you, does he?’

  ‘He’s a right nutter,’ the man replied.

  ‘What’s his name?’ asked Ross.

  ‘Arthur Stokes,’ said the constable. ‘Fifty years old. Used to be a bookie. Then he started acting strange, like.’ Ross wondered if that simply meant that Stokes had neglected to leave out the half-crown for the beat bobby that was the informal ‘tax’ on bookmakers. ‘So they put him away. Was out on a weekend pass, but he didn’t go back to the hospital. Neighbours complained he was behaving oddly—’

  ‘Anyone in there with him?’

  ‘Not that we know of. He has a char provided by the Corporation.’

  Ross grunted. ‘Any attempt to talk to him?’

  The constable showed his sleeve, ragged where a blast had sideswiped it. ‘In a manner of speaking.’

  ‘Right. Get the army here.’

  ‘The army?’

  ‘The man’s got a bloody gun—yes, the army. Tell them to bring tear gas, understand? When they get here, two blasts on the whistle to let me know. Then tell them to throw as much of the gas as they’ve got into that room.’

  ‘What are you going to do, sir?’

  Ross reached over and pulled the constable’s gas mask from its canvas bag. ‘I’m going over to shove that shotgun up the man’s arse.’ Ross was too tired to worry about the shocked expressions on the face of the group as he slipped away.

  Ross located the house easily enough. It was the one from which a man was yelling and firing into the street every five minutes. The shooter had found that hitting the ambulance tyres made a very satisfying noise, so he had blown out both of those that he could see and was trying to hit the taxi further down the street. Ross tiptoed through the scruffy garden and bent down to pick up a piece of jagged metal, hissing as he pricked his finger. Rocket shrapnel from the anti-aircraft batteries. He let the piece drop and sucked at his finger as he carried on across to the back door, aware of twitching curtains in the adjoining house. He flashed his warrant card.

  The rear door to the kitchen was locked, but Ross took off his coat, wrapped it around his elbow and, as the next shotgun barrel fired, smashed one of the panes of glass, put his hand through the hole and turned the key inside. He crept into the kitchen. It smelled of mouldy bread, rancid milk and cats. A big tabby looked at him with baleful eyes from the enamel counter of the green kitchen dresser, as if he too wanted this to end. Precious crockery was scattered across the floor, along with a sticky mass of chicory and coffee essence and the usual framed picture of the king, which had a bread knife protruding from it.

  Ross passed through the kitchen and into the dark hall, its chocolate colour scheme making it even gloomier. He could hear the man clearly now, ranting to himself in a low voice, with the odd word, usually a profanity, suddenly emphasised. Ross reached the bottom of the stairs, so intent on the landing above he almost stepped on the woman who lay sprawled across the bottom two steps.

  Ross felt his stomach turn several somersaults. She’d been shot at close range, and the top half of her torso was all glistening gristle and bone. The grey hair and the flowery pinafore suggested a woman of a certain age, but there were no features left to confirm it. The char, no doubt. Shot with both barrels by the look of it. He instinctively shooed away the fat flies that had settled on her, but they merely circled lazily and landed elsewhere on the feasting ground.

  Ross heard the whistle and steeled himself. A minute or so passed with him frozen on the stairs. Then came a thump and a yelp from the bedroom and the stamping of feet. The tear gas was in. Ross started to put on the gasmask when he heard Stokes rush out of the room, and through the fogged eyepiece he watched as the man tossed the canister over the balustrade. It exploded on the stairs just in front of him, a faceful of the acrid fumes slipping under the mask’s canvas hood before he could pull it on.

  Ross felt his eyes sting and his chest contract. Above him, more swearing. Ross ripped the mask from his face and leapt back just as the poor woman’s corpse received another blast of shotgun pellets, clearly meant for him.

  There were shadows at the front door, beyond the glass—army, probably—and he staggered backwards to it as Stokes sprinted along the landing and started down the stairs. Ross felt something snag his calf and looked down. It was an elephant’s leg, a three-foot-high chunk of an old tusker, now used as an umbrella and cane stand.

  As Stokes came down into full view, Ross swept up the appendage and ran forward, heaving it into the man as hard as he could. Ross was on him before he could recover, his hand locked on the painfully hot barrels of the gun. He had an image of crooked yellow teeth, a three-day growth of beard and crazed bloodshot eyes before he head-butted the man as hard as he could and passed out.

  Normality quickly returned to the street. Ross sat on the step while one of the nurses bandaged his burnt hand and swabbed something on his forehead and the ambulance driver tutted at the wreck of his vehicle. The army took Stokes off to a secure unit, and neighbours appeared to exchange doorstep gossip about their role in the Siege of St John Street.

  ‘There,’ said the nurse at last. ‘It’s a bit of an egg, but it’ll go down.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘No—thank you. You’re a brave man, Inspector.’

  Ross laughed ruefully. ‘No, I just got out of the wrong side of bed this morning.’

  ‘Well, tell the girlfriend to keep you on that side. It does us the power of good.’

  Ross smiled indulgently. He hadn’t had any dealings with women, certainly not a girlfriend, since poor Emma. Emma and Uli, one killed in front of his eyes, the other very probably dead, a victim of the air raids now pounding Berlin. Some love-life, he thought.

  Ross groaned when he realised that he’d have to do the paperwork on all this, then decided it could wait until tomorrow. He’d take the rest of his day off, and hang the consequences. He walked back towards his flat as it began to drizzle, and it was only as he was turning up his collar that he noticed the woman driving the Express Dairy milk cart, urging her horse on in a distinctly accented voice. She saw him too, pulled on the reins and stopped the horse. ‘Inspector?’

  ‘Hello, there,’ he said, still not having placed her.

  ‘It’s a good job I’ve got a journalist’s eye for a face. Didn’t recognise you with the beard for a second.’

  Journalist? It was Gertrud Ritter, the reporter from Vossische Zeitung whom he had met at the Walters’ house, five years previously.

  ‘You got out of Germany, then,’ he said. ‘Well done.’

  ‘Ssssh, not so loud,’ she hissed. ‘All my customers think I am a poor persecuted Pole.’

  Ross looked at the cart and the ribby, wheezing nag pulling it. ‘It’s a long way from journalism.’

  Her face, thinner than it had been, with long folds of flesh under her chin, wobbled as she shook her head in sadness. ‘It’s a long way from home. A long way from the Walters’ little soirées. Did you ever run into them?’

  ‘The Walters? They never got out.’


  Gertrud looked puzzled. ‘Oh, yes they did. I saw them here in … I think it was early 1940. Before I got carted off for a six-month holiday on the Isle of Man—’

  Ross didn’t believe what he was hearing. There must be a mistake. ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘Of course I’m sure. I spoke to them. The father and that strange daughter of his.’

  Ross’s mind whirled, trying to take it all in. Surely his father had checked for him? ‘They’re … here?’

  ‘They were. They may not have got back from wherever they were sent. But they certainly were. Are all you right?’

  Ross realised that he was rubbing his brow to try to fight off the headache that was blooming behind his eyes. Could this be true? And if it was, why hadn’t he known that Uli was in the country? ‘Yes,’ he mumbled. ‘Nice to see you again, Gertrud. I … I must go.’

  ‘Of course. And I have a horse to feed. Goodbye, Inspector.’ She made a tch noise with her teeth and the beast clopped into motion.

  Ross walked home slowly, running the news over and over in his mind. She’d been here, in England, and she was alive. Those few short words made his heart race. Uli was alive.

  Twenty-Two

  AS USUAL ON a Wednesday, Uli washed and brushed her hair carefully and clipped it up. Dennis was coming with deliveries and, as had been the habit since the late spring, he would take her off camp for a picnic with food that his mother—or ‘mom’ as he put it—had prepared.

  It was more or less an open camp now. Fraternisation between the men’s and women’s sections was the norm. A child had even been born, and Frau Menkel had an admirer, which had put a skip in her once leaden step. She had lived through a darker winter than most when she discovered that her husband had been hanged as a spy at Wandsworth Prison two years earlier, at the beginning of 1941. The information had not been released at the time for ‘intelligence reasons’.

  Her mourning had been hard to watch as she folded into herself, sitting on her bunk, hour after hour, rocking back and forth. Now, though, she had come to terms with it, and either she didn’t bear the British too much ill will or else hid any resentment exceedingly well.