by Rennie Airth
With a growl, he broke the spell. Enough! The dark street his thoughts had wandered down led nowhere. Frowning, he stared at the soft velvet bag resting in the palm of his hand, and as he did so an idea came to him. It concerned his street coat, which he’d taken off and hung up in the hall when he came in. Another Savile Row creation, its elegant folds contained an ample expanse of silk lining, and it had occurred to him that this might be put to some practical use as a place of concealment. It would require some skill in sewing, he saw that, but surely this young woman who was about to arrive could help him there. He didn’t doubt he could trust her, she and her companion both, these brave young people, who even if they were fleeing with him now, surely meant to continue the fight against the loathed enemy. London, Caspar Kinski had said. That was where they meant to go, and Maurice wondered if he might not be able to help them achieve their aim. With money, certainly, but perhaps in other ways, too, once they had reached Spain. He had business contacts in many capitals.
Cheered by the thought — he was relieved to have shrugged off his dark mood — Maurice went out into the entrance hall where his coat was hanging. As he reached for it, he heard the creak of the garden gate followed by the sound of footsteps on the gravel path. Smiling a greeting, he opened the door to what he thought were his guests and received instead a blow to the jaw that sent him staggering backwards and then, before he had time to react, a second to the side of his head that knocked him to the paved floor. Crouched on his hands and knees, spitting out blood from a cut lip, he was aware only of a pair of trousered legs which moved swiftly around him and out of his blurred vision. Next moment his throat was encircled by something so thin it seemed to have no substance, but which burned like fire as it cut its way into his flesh, deeper and deeper. The pain was intense, but it lasted for only a few moments. Then sight and consciousness faded and his agony ceased.
PART ONE
1
London, November 1944
Hands in pockets, Bert huddled deeper in the doorway. Crikey, it was cold!
The wind that had got up earlier was still blowing, but not in gusts like before; now it was steady. It had force, and the power of it cut clean through his coat and overalls, and the jersey he was wearing underneath that, and went straight to his bones. And though his tin helmet, with the W for air-raid warden painted on the front, was safely settled on his head and hardly likely to fly away, even in the gale that was blowing, he clutched at it automatically.
‘You’ll catch your death, Bert Cotter, going out on a night like this,’ Vi had warned him earlier when he’d been preparing to set off from the small flat in St Pancras where they lived. She’d insisted he put on an extra vest. ‘And what’s the use anyway? It’s no good telling people to put their lights out. It don’t make no difference to a buzz bomb.’
The advice was wasted on Bert. Hadn’t he been saying the same thing himself for weeks? There hadn’t been a proper raid on London since the summer. The Luftwaffe — the bloomin’ Luftwaffe to Vi — had finally shot its bolt, or so they were assured. Now there were only the flying bombs to worry about. Those and these new V-2 rockets, which the government had finally admitted were falling on the city,though most people had already guessed it. After all, how many times could mysterious explosions be put down to gas leaks before people started asking questions?
‘What do they take us for?’ Vi had enquired of him in all seriousness. As though she thought he might actually know the answer. ‘Bloomin’ idiots?’
Fishing out a packet of fags from his coat pocket, Bert chuckled. She was right about the blackout, though. The whole of London could be lit up and it wouldn’t change a thing. The bombs and rockets fell where they fell, and all you could hope was it wasn’t your head they came down on.
He lit his cigarette and then used the flickering flame of the match to check his wristwatch. He was close to the end of his three-hour tour of duty and anxious to get home. Too old to enlist — he’d done his bit in France in the last shindig — Bert had opted to serve part time in civil defence, and since he worked in the area, being employed as a carpenter and general handyman at the British Museum, he’d joined a squad of wardens assigned to the Bloomsbury district. There’d been a time, back in ‘40, during the Blitz, when Jerry bombers had come over night after night, turning whole areas of the city into cauldrons of fire, when the job had been one to be proud of.
But now Bert wasn’t so sure. The excitement he’d felt at the start of the conflict had long since faded. Truth to tell he was sick of patrolling the night-time streets, fed up with blowing his whistle and bawling up at people to ‘put that bloody light out’. It was a feeling shared by many, and not least by his fellow wardens, if that evening’s performance was anything to go by. When Bert had turned up at their rendezvous point a little earlier — it was a pub in the Tottenham Court Road — he’d discovered that no fewer than four of the dozen-strong squad had rung in to excuse themselves. Two had bad colds (they said), one had twisted his ankle (a likely story) and the fourth had referred to some unspecified family crisis that prevented him from leaving home. Vi was right. Only a muggins like yours truly would venture out on a night like this.
His thoughts were interrupted by the wail of a siren. It sounded close by, coming from the area of Covent Garden, he guessed, and instinctively he glanced upwards, searching for the telltale finger of flame that would signal the approach of a flying bomb. During the summer they arrived day and night from across the Channel, and Londoners had learned to recognize the sinister drone of their engines and to dread the moment when the noise ceased and the craft, loaded with explosives, plunged to earth. Fewer fell now, it was true: the advance of the Allied armies in France and Holland had forced the Jerries to move their launching sites. But the threat was far from over. Only a few weeks before, returning home from work, crossing Tavistock Square, Bert had seen one pass overhead and heard its engine cut out. The tremendous explosion that followed had made the windows in the square rattle, and seconds later a huge buff plume of smoke had risen from the vicinity of King’s Cross like a pillar into the grey October sky. Ears pricked, he waited now, but after a minute or so the noise stopped and the silence of the night was restored. A false alarm.
Bert put out his cigarette. It was time to get moving. The doorway where he’d taken refuge was in Little Russell Street, near the corner of Museum Street, and he needed only to walk over to Tottenham Court Road to reach the boundary of his allotted territory, a patchwork of narrow roads bounded to the north by Great Russell Street and to the south by Bloomsbury Way. The wardens usually patrolled in pairs, but because of the absentees that evening he was on his own and had already decided to shorten his route. Not two minutes from where he stood now, at the top of Museum Street, his place of employment loomed large and lightless, and although it seemed deserted he knew very well that the museum’s doors would be unlocked and a squad of volunteer firemen would be on duty inside. (They’d been posted there as a precaution ever since a night back in 1941 when dozens of incendiary bombs had come through the roof during a Jerry raid and several of the rooms had been burned out.) What he planned to do was pop in there for a cup of tea, get the cold out of his bones, and then leg it home to St Pancras. (And two nights from now when he was next on duty he might just come down with a cold himself.)
As Bert slipped out of the doorway he heard footsteps, and next moment a dark figure came swinging round the corner from Museum Street.
‘Whoops …! Sorry, miss.’
If it hadn’t been for the cry the figure let out as they collided Bert might not have known it was a young woman. She was wearing a coat which had a hood attached to it and was walking with her head down.
‘It’s this blinkin’ blackout.’ Seeing her shrink back, he tried to reassure her. ‘You never see anything until it’s too late.’
‘I am sorry. It was my fault.’ Breathless from haste, she spoke with a foreign accent. ‘I should have looked where I was going.’
The face beneath the hood was a white blur. Bert noticed she had a bag in each hand.
‘Bitter night,’ he remarked, drawing his own coat closer about him, resettling the helmet on his head.
‘Yes, isn’t it?’ The relief in her voice made him wonder if she’d felt nervous walking through the blackout on her own.
She’d put down one of her bags for a moment, and he saw now that in fact it was a basket, heavily laden, its contents covered by a cloth. He tested its weight and then held it ready for her while she wiggled her fingers to get the circulation back.
‘Thank you so much.’ She took the basket from him.
‘I hope you haven’t far to go with those.’ He nodded at her burdens.
‘No, it’s only a short walk.’
‘I’ll give you a hand if you like.’
She looked over her shoulder. ‘No, really. It’s not necessary.’ He caught a glimpse of her smile in the shadow cast by the hood. ‘Goodnight, and thank you for your help.’
She plodded on, and as he watched her figure disappearing into the darkness Bert wondered if he shouldn’t have insisted. She seemed like a nice girl. But his bones ached from the cold and whatever faint impulse he felt to follow her faded at the thought of the hot cup of tea awaiting him.
She would manage, he told himself as her figure grew faint and then vanished in the darkness.
She hadn’t far to go.
Feeling a lot better after his break — the firemen were a friendly lot — Bert hurried down the museum steps into the buffeting wind and then tacked his way across the great forecourt like a ship under sail. The sirens he’d heard earlier hadn’t sounded again. He was ready to call it a night. But while sitting in the warmth inside he’d felt the prick of conscience, and instead of going home directly as he’d planned he’d decided to return to where he’d interrupted his round earlier and make a final inspection of his area.
Pausing only to adjust his shoulder bag, he set off briskly down Museum Street, using the road itself, rather than the pavement. Although the blackout restrictions had been relaxed in recent weeks — in some districts of the capital, street lamps were now permitted to show a glimmer of light, creating what was called a moonlight effect — inky darkness continued to prevail in many areas, and if you wanted to avoid barking your shins on unseen obstacles, or, even worse, collecting a black eye from walking into a lamp-post, it was best to keep to the middle of the street.
Bert had barely turned the corner and started down Little Russell Street, however, when he heard the sound of a car behind him. Looking back he saw its reduced headlights approaching, and moved off the roadway to give it passage. It went by slowly, the driver steering his vehicle carefully down the dark canyon created by the buildings on either side of the narrow street. Bert continued to walk along the pavement. He was keeping an eye on the car, ready to move back on to the road at the first opportunity, but before he had a chance to do so his foot caught on something and he tripped and fell headlong.
‘Bloody ’ell!’ Half-winded by the fall, he lay where he was for a moment, collecting his wits. ‘What in the name of …?’
Lifting himself up on one elbow he peered behind him. The darkness seemed impenetrable. But there was something there all right. He could feel it when he pushed his foot back; an obstruction of some kind. Bert levered himself into a sitting position. His shoulder bag had come off, but he quickly located it by feeling around in the dark, and having got the straps unbuckled his questing fingers found the torch which he carried inside it. He switched on the light.
‘Christ Almighty!’
The whispered exclamation was involuntary. Revealed by the wavering beam, a pair of legs was protruding on to the pavement. They belonged to a woman, there was no doubt of that. Bert could see a knee-length skirt beneath the coat which the sprawled figure was wearing. He shifted the light. His hand was shaking.
‘Ah, no …!’
He recognized the figure: it was the young girl he’d bumped into earlier. Her pale face was clearly visible now that the hood she’d been wearing had been dragged clear of her head. Bert could see the basket she’d been carrying lying beside her. It had tipped over and he caught a glimpse of some strewn apples and the remains of what looked like broken eggs. Although he knew instinctively that she was dead, he stirred himself to scramble to his knees and reach for her wrist, which lay close to him, the hand beneath it clenched. He found no pulse.
‘Poor lass …’
Fumbling in the pocket of his overalls, Bert got hold of his police whistle, and as the wind gathered in strength, ascending to a high keening note not unlike a howl of grief, he blew a long blast on it. Then another … and another, piercing the enveloping blackness around him with its urgent summons.
2
‘She was murdered all right, sir. There’s no doubt of that. A possible strangulation. It seems an air-raid warden stumbled on the body. The first officer on the scene was a woman police constable. She was passing by and heard him blow his whistle. Bow Street has some men examining the site now. Because of the blackout, they weren’t able to do it properly last night.’
Chief Inspector Angus Sinclair shifted uncomfortably in his chair. He’d spent a sleepless night, disturbed by the buffeting wind and also by an attack of gout, a malady that had begun to plague him in recent years. As Bennett watched he lifted one foot off the floor and set it down gently. Aware that the subject was a sensitive one so far as his colleague was concerned, the assistant commissioner kept a tactful silence.
Sinclair squinted at the page he was reading from. ‘We don’t have a name as yet,’ he said. ‘But she appears to be in her early twenties and … er … respectable.’ He frowned at his own choice of word.
‘Not a prostitute, then.’ Bennett nodded. Thanks to the blackout, assaults after dark had become commonplace in London. Streetwalkers, in particular, had suffered in the upsurge of violence which the war years had brought to the capital. ‘Do we know why she was killed?’
‘Not as yet, sir. Bow Street rang in with this information overnight. They’re sending other details over by hand. I expect to hear from them quite soon.’
Bennett grunted. ‘What else?’ He gestured towards the typed sheets held together by a paper clip which Sinclair had laid on his knee. A summary of all crimes reported in the Metropolitan area during the preceding twenty-four hours, it was delivered to the chief inspector’s desk each day in time for their morning conference, which took place in Bennett’s office overlooking the Thames embankment.
‘Just the usual. Balham organized a raid on a premises in Brixton last night. Two printing presses were seized. They were being used to turn out fake identity cards and ration documents. No arrests as yet.’ The chief inspector paused. ‘And we’ve had another report of looting in Stepney. They took a pounding over the weekend. Two V-2s came down in the district. The police are trying to keep an eye on damaged houses, but the looters slip in at night.’
‘I want them caught.’ Bennett’s face darkened. ‘Put the word out. If more men are needed, we’ll find them.’ In common with most policemen, he regarded looting as a particularly loathsome crime. It was taking advantage of others’ misfortunes in the worst possible way and offenders could look for no mercy from the courts.
‘One bright spot, if you can call it that.’ Sinclair glanced up. ‘The Stockwell police stopped a lorry they thought was suspicious in the early hours. It turned out to be filled with frozen carcasses of beef. Fresh from the Argentine, I’ve no doubt.’ The chief inspector lifted a grizzled eyebrow. ‘Two men were arrested. They’re still being questioned.’
‘It could be that hijacking gang we’ve been after.’ The assistant commissioner tried to sound optimistic. ‘Perhaps they’ll lead us to the rest.’
‘We can always hope,’ Sinclair agreed, though without much conviction. ‘So far all they’ve said is they were offered a tenner each by a man they’d never met before to drive the lorry to London. I doubt
they’ll change their story.’
He brooded on his words. Five years of war had brought a new dimension to lawbreaking, one which had stretched police resources to their limits. The thicket of regulations designed to control the distribution of food and other scarce resources issued by the government at the start of the conflict had opened fresh avenues for the criminal world, and it gave the chief inspector little satisfaction to know that several of the capital’s most dangerous gangs, formerly employed in the business of extortion and notorious before the war for their violent conduct at race meetings, had long since moved into new spheres of activity linked to the flourishing black market. Even worse, the virus had spread to the general population. Prompted by shortages and driven beyond endurance by the tendency of authority to poke its nose into every corner of life, ordinarily decent citizens now broke laws they no longer respected without compunction, taxing the police still further.
The telephone on Bennett’s desk rang and the assistant commissioner picked it up. While he was speaking, Sinclair allowed his gaze to stray to the windows, where a sky the colour of dishwater could be glimpsed through panes crisscrossed with tape to minimize bomb blast. Try as he might, he could no longer bring the same passion to his work he had once felt. In truth, he found it only a burden now, a duty he accepted as necessary for the good of the force he had served for half a century, but one he could hardly wait to relinquish. The mortal struggle which his country had been engaged in these past five years had demanded sacrifices from all, and Sinclair’s own contribution had been to defer his plans for retirement, already in place when war had broken out, and answer the appeal which had come from Bennett’s own lips.
‘Angus, I need you. This war will be fought to the death, and it won’t be over by Christmas.’ This had been in late 1939, following the German invasion of Poland and before its assault on France, when peace had still seemed a possibility to some. ‘The Metropolitan Police will suffer along with everyone else. We’re already losing men to the forces and no fresh recruiting will be allowed until the fighting’s over. It won’t be long before we feel the pinch.’
