by Daniel Kemp
Where would I be now if the English Tommy had shot me instead of saving my life? Hitler asked our Prime Minister.
He wants no war with us. Chamberlain went on. He only wants the Rhineland and Czechoslovakia and to stay friends!
“Where indeed would we all be?” Dicky interjected. “Did he get shoved up against a wall and shot for negligence, this Private Taddey fellow, Barrington?”
“Hardly. He was the most decorated First World War soldier we had. VC, MC, DSO and more, so I heard.”
“Interesting, but I wager it wasn't true. Just another rumour that got enlarged upon as it travelled down the line. Incidentally, was it down to those spurious rumours linking you and Stewart Campbell, that led to Meredith Paine letting go of your hand and shunting you off to Special Branch, or was it your choice to move on? Only, it was thought you could have made my chair one day. It was at the Savoy, wasn't it, that you and he were said to be found in a compromising situation. Allegedly of course. Personally speaking I'd heard them before I ran into Sir Archibald Finn from Group earlier today. It was he who reminded me of Jack Price, old sport. Hence the invitation! But back to business, just because two fellows are naked in a hotel room doesn't mean they were at it, in my book. Strange country ours, don't you think? Always ready to believe the worse without question. One man's life is ruined by supposition and another's honoured with medals for saving the enemy. How's that crumble of yours? Mine seems a mite short of apple so far. Is there a shortage in the market that you're aware of?”
Trenchard's nerves were at breaking point. His sanity was hanging by the same single hair that held Dionysius's fate. Dicky's puerile remarks and his earlier implied threat were beginning to rattle and madden him.
“Perhaps Price has bought them all and is at this moment handing them out around to the poor in South London. He's probably holding a banner proclaiming that's it's due to your charitableness, Dicky! What is it that you want from me exactly, as I was busy before you summoned?” His question was ignored.
“By the by, didn't you spend some time in Ireland in the sixties, having dealings with Sir Archibald over there? You were heading up a special police unit as I understand whilst he was running the intelligence show. Had contact with any natives, did you? But no, I haven't really any time for that line to progress further at the moment. Save it for another meal. What I want now is to know whose idea it was to shoot an Irish terrorist and then kidnap the young detective who shot him. Because even someone as dumb as you would not have done that without his arm being twisted. Has someone got him locked up in some Scottish Castle and demanding a ransom, Barrington? Because if so I want him back!”
“How did you come to hear of West, Dicky?” Trenchard asked incredulously, almost having a heart attack.
“We have a seat at the Irish table. There's nothing happening over there that doesn't pass across my desk at some time. The boys with letters after their names have a phrase for it: Swings and Slides, or SAS as they prefer. It means that none of us are on the same apparatus in the playground at the same time. Ireland being the playground. A bit confusing actually. Whenever I see it I think it's our Special Air Service they're referring to.”
If Commander Trenchard, one time warrior of Her Majesty's secret intelligence service and now the head of police undercover counter-intelligence had a retreat strategy it was left shattered by an innocent conversation between two former associates that he wished he'd never known.
In New York
I learned little regarding Haynes Baxter-Clifford whilst lying with Penni and neither did I see many boats on the Hudson River whilst on her virginal bed, but there were lots of other things I learned that aroused my interest. One of them being that Leeba had dated Haynes before he and Penni had met. But the most thought-provoking came about during a conversation in the most innocent of ways.
We were discussing her recording studio, with Penni in full flow describing the nuances between different sounds, echoes, tones and pitches that can be achieved by expert use of subtle variations and mix. It was variations that were on her mind.
“Do you think that my brother and sister are different to me, Shaun? By that I mean facially and with their colouring.” That was a bombshell I hadn't expected.
“I haven't given it much thought to be honest, Penni. Do you think you're different to them?”
“Actually I do. I have done throughout my conscious life. Both Richard and Leeba have brown eyes, whereas mine are blue. They have similar coloured brown hair but mine is blonde and I'm taller than either of them. I reckon our mother had an affair and I'm the product of it.”
“If that's the case then I have nothing but admiration for your mother's choice of lover. He must have been an even better looking man than your sister's father.” I laughingly replied, feeling relieved.
On leaving her apartment I took a cab and returned to my office intent on finding more on Haynes than the little she had provided. If it was possible to discover closer dealings of any nature between him and Weilham then Saturday might prove more beneficial for Jack and ultimately me. Any deficiency I was suffering from in my sexual education prior to arriving in America was fast becoming the basis of an interesting study, but although it was intensely pleasurable it was not helping in the primary reason for me being here. I did want to follow Jack's instructions, but there were complications that he had either failed to see or disregarded. I wasn't completely sure as to which at this stage.
Leeba had left the office fifteen minutes or so before Penni had arrived, and as the outside door was locked and the reception area empty I assumed that the whole building was the same, but I was wrong. I set about searching through the files of local records on building contracts along with the recorded charities that the Baxter-Clifford company donated money to when Leeba entered the room from the interconnecting door with two empty glasses, along with an ice bucket and an unopened bottle of whisky. Her hair was tied back tightly to her head and the top three buttons of her blouse were undone.
“Do you want the Scotch with or without ice, Shaun, and how would you like me?”
“I'll take ice with the Scotch, but you as straight or whichever way you want. I think ice would be too cold for what you have in mind,” I replied as I rose from my chair and locked the outside office door.
“There's no need for that, everyone's gone home. We have the place to ourselves. You've been indulging yourself with my sister for too long, now it's my turn.”
She was an intense, passionate lover, quieter and more serene than Penni, but not at first. That had been a noisy explosion of excited ecstasy on the small two-seater sofa where she had pounded at me until breaking open a tiny crack and allowing, in her words, a dam to burst. Having experienced that sensation she then took her time. What she may have lacked in finesse compared to Penni she more than made up for in energy.
“I want to wake up beside you in your bed, Shaun. This can't end here like some tawdry one-nighter that Penni would indulge herself in. I want more than that. Much more!”
After my earlier exertions with her daughter, and now her, I was tiring and eagerly accepted her suggestion about the bed, hoping the walk to Baxter Street might exhaust some of her vigour. It didn't.
As I opened my apartment door I checked that the coloured matchstick was still in the doorjamb where I'd left it, but I had no need to fear an intruder, it was my invited guest that I should have been afraid of.
Chapter Twenty-One
The Travellers Club London
Times
Sir Richard Blythe-Smith had one eye on the club's dining room clock and the other one fixed firmly on his quarry; Barrington Trenchard. He deduced that neither were making his life any the easier.
“I would have thought that a security van raid in the West End was low grade material for you to spend much time on, Dicky. How did you hear of that?” Barrington asked, noticing Dicky's glance at the clock and hoping that his tormentor would soon run out of time and give up the chase
.
“I got the details from Archie. We did not meet to discuss old acquaintances and rumours of a homosexual liaison you may or may not have played a role in. The man your DC West shot was on General John's books. He told Archie who in turn got fairly perturbed by it all, even more so when he smelled Jack in the mix. Seems that Henry Acre was providing worthy intelligence on some American sympathisers who are funding various activities of the Republican army, including an arm shipment from Libya that was recently seized. General John's department were running him. They knew of the security van heist and approved it. Drew the line short of any killing, but violence was permitted. That way it supplied additional weight to Acre's curriculum vitae. John's plan was to slam Acre into Parkhurst prison on the Isle of Wight alongside the other Irish terrorists banged up in there, sit back and reap the benefits. But then fate played a hand, up steps your boy and blasts him to kingdom come. General John was none too pleased, old chap. Started to call Archie unjust names and you some you deserved, hence the mud-slinging about the Savoy. That's my toe-in into this story, what's yours?”
“If you and Archie are thinking that Jack Price was behind it all then both of you are idiots, or perhaps I should use your word, Dicky; dumb! Do you have to sign for this meal at the table or can you do it on the way out, as I have work to do and people to see.”
“As do I, old bean. As do I. But first tell me exactly how your department got entangled in this web? Cross the T's and dot the I's if you'd be so kind. We wouldn't want to be having to do this again in some less comfortable place, now would we? The direction signs carrying the word Blame are pointing your way, old bean. Everything is on your plate with the meat smelling slightly rank downwind. If I were you I'd come clean about it all.”
Barrington poured the last of the coffee from the pot into his own cup and lit his first cigarette of the week.
“Never realised you smoked, Barrington. New thing, is it?” Dicky asked.
“To be honest, Dicky, I rarely do, but I think the occasion warrants it somehow. I'm beginning to feel a bit caged in.”
“I take it Jack never approached you directly then, sort of came by the back door, did he?”
“Nothing suspicious in the information that came to me. I heard of his connection in a phone call last Friday morning from the Home Office. Said I was to dispatch West to Price's address in Soho and harry him a bit.” Trenchard was lying, but having committed that sin he had no alternative but to see it through.
“A strange instruction didn't you think?”
“I just follow orders, Dicky. Try not to think too much about them.”
“Did you get a name from the Home Office, Barrington?”
“No, quoted current standing orders and left it there.”
“How about the following morning? What were you told of that?”
“Nothing specific, only that West was to be reassigned and his name to be erased from our records.”
“Was this unusual, no written order to that effect, just verbally over a phone line?”
“Not exceptional, it happens sometimes and it was on the internal secure system.”
“Did you surmise anything? Any clue in the voice? Was it something of an occasion to celebrate, do you think, or one where a rap over the knuckles was on offer?”
“Certainly not an admonishment, as West had been exceptional throughout his time with us. He'd come with the highest recommendation from Oxford. I had interviewed him myself. Marked as special by none other than the Commissioner. Full red carpet treatment with kid gloves. At the time I did think it was strange that someone so high could know of an undergraduate, but I never considered an old hand like Jack Price to be interfering.”
“This would be our present Commissioner of police would it?”
“Yes! Not sure of the timescale now but he rang me personally and told me to recruit West.”
“Give you any reason for that?”
“None at all, Dicky!”
“You never thought to ask.” Dicky shook his head with his eyes wide open in astonishment, sitting solidly back in his chair.
“I've never questioned my superiors. I'm just an ordinary soldier, not a leader of men like yourself.”
Leaning forward Dicky said, “Archie tells me that this West chappie put his mark on some senior Met officers who are on the take. Could one of them have been close to Price? Know something that we're missing, do you think?”
“I wouldn't have thought. Their files are with internal investigations who are pursuing the matter. If there is anything to find then I'm sure they will.”
“You had better get those files back pretty smartly. Go through them yourself, mark them up as possible matching where appropriate and send them over to section four at my place. You can't be the only policeman in London who's worked with our Mr Price over the years. When you get back, write me up a detailed report starting when your Commissioner tossed you Patrick West's name. I want the names of everyone on his initiation board. Who signed his papers and the names of the others in your records office who may have had dealings with him. Also I want a more detailed account than you've given me on why a Commissioner sends you a university student's name? I want that on the desk of section four tonight, Barrington. This takes priority, Trenchard. I'm not saying that your life depends on it, but it damn well nearly does!”
“What am I being accused of, Dicky?”
“I thought I would start at treason and then work my way down.”
“Treason! You're being ridiculous. I have done no wrong, let alone am I a traitor.”
“The actual indictment is waiting to be decided upon; treason, incompetence or just sheer bad luck. Until we know what Jack's up to and what's the colour of West's underpants everything's up in the air so to speak. At the moment yours is the only throat I can grab hold of. In time, I expect others to come along, but until then I'm going to throttle you so get used to it, old chap. It's entirely up to you as to how painful that could be.”
At that Dicky left, making an impromptu call on the head of the Civil Service in Whitehall on his circuitous way to number one Curzon Street; the new home of General John. It was four-forty on Monday afternoon when he eventually arrived at his own department. He was running late.
New York
I too was running out of time. Leeba had finally fallen asleep just before midnight, having exhausted her appetite for the two things that she had denied herself, the first being sex and the second being whisky. She was no regular drinker, but the abstention from sex made her hunger for its experience the more pleasurable. However, it was impossible to say which previously forbidden fruit had loosened her tongue the most. Her dynamic revelations captured my spiritual attention as much as her capacity for fornication had held my physical awareness. Not only did I need the wisdom of Solomon to make sense of what she told me, I needed to understand why she had as well.
As she copiously emptied the bottle her craving for corporeal fulfilment slowly decreased, to be overtaken by a compelling necessity to share more of her knowledge. My body was pleased about the first, but confused thoroughly by the second. There were no recollections of Vienna in anything she told. It was as though she had never been to Austria.
“Haynes and Earl's father, Herbert Baxter, inherited the family logging business when he was twenty-four years of age on the death of his own father in 1914. For the next two years he and his mother ran the company together, setting in motion the process that has turned it from a middle of the road family concern into the highly profitable property development company it has become today. His interest in timber also expanded to such an extent that by the time of his mother's death in 1916 he owned two saw mills in his own state of Connecticut and three in Canada. It was the trade in timber that led to him meeting, and then marrying, Mary Clifford, the only daughter of Michael Clifford, an Irishman who hates all things English. The Clifford's owned real estate stretching across America from California to New Jersey but until Mary and Herbert
married, none in Manhattan. Michael Clifford is still alive and meddling in anti-British affairs, but Mary died of cancer a year after giving birth to Haynes.
Herbert Baxter, now with the hyphen of Clifford added to his name, was devastated when that happened, turning more and more towards Mary's father Michael for solace in his grief. From his father-in-law he gained huge advantages, particularly with the unions involved on the growing number of building sites he became interested in, but it wasn't only a one-sided covenant. Michael Clifford was one of the major providers of finance for both the Provisional Army in the island of Ireland and later the National Socialist German Workers' Party. Herbert was expected to contribute, which he did. His monetary contributions were made directly to a bank account in Switzerland managed by none other than the German minister for economics, the vice-chancellor of Germany; Hermann Göring, Shaun.
In 1942 both Earl and Haynes were overseeing the building of the so-called Secret City at Oak Ridge Tennessee. A site previously owned by Michael Clifford, thereby evading conscription into any military arm of service. Neither son knew of their father's financial arrangements with Nazi Germany, nor did the FBI. Nothing has changed as far as the FBI is concerned, but for Earl and Haynes things altered when Germany began to realise that they had lost the war.”
