by Ken Follett
solid contentment, happy permanence. She said: "Why didn't you? Leave,
I mean."
"Oh, people just didn't, in those days. There wasn't all this divorce,
and a woman couldn't get a job."
"Women work at all sorts of things now."
"They did in the last war, but everything changed afterwards with a bit
of unemployment. I expect it will be the same this time. Men get
their way, you know, generally speaking."
"And you're glad you stayed." It was not a question.
"People my age shouldn't make pronouncements about Life. But my life
has been a matter of making-do, and the same goes for most of the women
I know. Steadfastness always looks like a sacrifice, but usually it
isn't. Anyway, I'm not going to give you advice. You wouldn't take
it, and if you did you'd blame your problems on me, I expect."
"Oh, Mother," Lucy smiled.
Mother said: "Shall we turn round? I think we've gone far enough for
one day."
In the kitchen one evening Lucy said to David: "I'd like Mother to stay
another two weeks, if she will.
Mother was upstairs putting Jo to bed, telling him a story.
David said: "Isn't a fortnight long enough for you to dissect my
personality?"
"Don't be silly, David."
He wheeled himself over to her chair.
"Are you telling me you don't talk about me?"
"Of course we talk about you you're my husband." What do you say to
her, then?"
"Why are you so worried?" Lucy said, not without malice. What are you
so ashamed of?"
"Damn you, I've nothing to be ashamed of. No one wants his personal
life talked about by a pair of gossiping women."
"We don't gossip about you."
"What do you say?"
"Aren't you touchy!"
"Answer my question."
"I say I want to leave you, and she tries to talk me out of it."
He spun around and wheeled away.
"Tell her not to bother for my sake."
She called: "Do you mean that?"
He stopped.
"I don't need anybody, do you understand? I can manage alone. I'm
self-sufficient."
"And what about me?" she said quietly.
"Perhaps I need somebody."
"What for?"
"To love me."
Mother came in, and sensed the atmosphere.
"He's fast asleep," she said.
"Dropped off before Cinderella got to the ball. I think I'll pack a
few things, not to leave it all until tomorrow." She went out again.
"Do you think it will ever change, David?" Lucy asked.
"I don't know what you mean."
Will we ever be... the way we were, before the wedding?"
"My legs won't grow back, if that's what you mean."
"Oh, God, don't you know that doesn't bother me? I just want to be
loved."
David shrugged.
"That's your problem." He went out before she started to cry.
Mother did not stay the second fortnight. Lucy walked with her down to
the jetty the next day. It was raining hard, and they both wore
mackintoshes. They stood in silence waiting for the boat, watching the
rain pit the sea with tiny craters. Mother held Jo in her arms.
"Things will change, in time, you know," she said. Tour years is
nothing in a marriage."
Lucy said: "I don't think he'll change, but there's not much I can do
other than give it a chance. There's Jo, and the war, and David's
disability how can I leave?"
The boat arrived, and Lucy exchanged her mother for three boxes of
groceries and five letters. The water was choppy. Mother sat in the
boat's tiny cabin. They waved her around the headland. Lucy felt very
lonely.
Jo began to cry.
"I don't want Gran to go away!"
"Nor do I," said Lucy.
TEN
Godliman and Bloggs walked side by side along the pavement of a
bomb-damaged London shopping street. They were a mismatched pair: the
stooped, bird-like professor, with pebble-lensed spectacles and a pipe,
not looking where he was going, taking short, scurrying steps; and the
flat footed youngster, blond and purposeful, in his detective's
raincoat and melodramatic hat: a cartoon looking for a caption.
Godliman was saying: "I think Die Nadel is well-connected."
"Why?"
"The only way he could be so insubordinate with impunity. It's this
"Regards to Willi" line. It must refer to Canaris."
"You think he was pals with Canaris."
"He's pals with somebody perhaps someone more powerful than Canaris
was."
"I have the feeling this is leading somewhere."
"People who are well-connected generally make those connections at
school, or university, or staff college. Look at that."
They were outside a shop which had a huge empty space where once there
had been a plate-glass window. A rough sign, hand-painted and nailed
to the window-frame, said: "Even more open than usual."
Bloggs laughed, and said: "I saw one outside a bombed police station:
"Be good. We are still open." '"It's become a minor art form."
They walked on. Bloggs said: "So, what if Die Nadel did go to school
with someone high in the Wermacht?"
"People always have their pictures taken at school. Midwinter down in
the basement at Kensington that house where MI6 used to be before the
war he's got a collection of thousands of photographs of German
officers: school photos, binges in the Mess, passing-out parades,
shaking hands with Adolf, newspaper pictures everything."
"I see," Bloggs said.
"So if you're right, and Die Nadel has been through Germany's
equivalent of Eton and Sandhurst, we've probably got a picture of
him."
"Almost certainly. Spies are notoriously camera-shy, but they don't
become spies until they're well into adulthood. It will be a youthful
Die Nadel that we find in Midwinter's files."
They skirted a huge crater outside a barber's. The shop was intact,
but the traditional red-and-white striped pole lay in shards on the
pavement. The sign in the window said: "We've had a close shave come
and get one yourself."
Bloggs said: "How will we recognize him? No one has ever seen him."
"Yes, they have. At Mrs. Garden's boarding-house in High-gate they
know him quite well."
The Victorian house stood on a hill overlooking London. It was built
of red brick, and Bloggs thought it looked angry at the damage Hitler
was doing to its city. It was high up; a good place from which to
broadcast. Die Nadel would have lived on the top floor. Bloggs
wondered what secrets the spy had transmitted to Hamburg from this
place in the dark days of 1940. Map references for aircraft factories
and steel works details of coastal de fences political gossip, gas
masks and Anderson shelters and sandbags, British morale, bomb damage
reports, "Well done, boys, you got Christine Bloggs at last Shut up.
The door was opened by an elderly man in a black jacket and striped
trousers.
"Good morning. I'm Inspector Bloggs, from Scotland Yard I'd like a
word with the householder, please."
Bl
oggs saw fear leap to the man's eyes, then a young woman appeared in
the doorway and said: "Come in, please."
The tiled hall smelled of wax polish. Bloggs hung his hat and coat on
a stand. The old man disappeared into the depths of the house, and the
woman led Bloggs into a lounge. It was expensively furnished in a
rich, old-fashioned way. There were bottles of whisky, gin and sherry
on a trolley: all the bottles were unopened. The woman sat down on a
floral armchair and crossed her legs.
Bloggs said: "Why is the old man frightened of the police?"
"My father-in-law is a German Jew. He came here in 1935 to escape
Hitler, and in 1940 you put him in a concentration camp. His wife
killed herself at the prospect. He has just been released from the
Isle of Man. He had a letter from the King, apologizing for the
inconvenience to which he had been put."
Bloggs said: "We don't have concentration camps."
"We invented them. In South Africa. Didn't you know? We go on about
our history, but we forget bits. We're so good at blinding ourselves
to unpleasant facts."
"Perhaps it's just as well."
"What?"
"In 1939 we blinded ourselves to the unpleasant fact that we couldn't
win a war with Germany and look what happened."
"That's what my father-in-law says. He's not as cynical as I. What can
we do to assist Scotland Yard?"
Bloggs had been enjoying the exchange, and now it was with reluctance
that he turned his attention to work.
"It's about a murder that took place here four years ago."
"So long!"
"Some new evidence may have come to light."
"I know about it, of course. The previous owner was killed by a
tenant. My husband bought the house from her executor she had no
heirs."
"I want to trace the other people who were tenants at that time."
"Yes." The woman's hostility had gone, now, and her intel8?
ligent face showed the effort of recollection.
"When we arrived there were three who had been here before the murder:
a retired naval officer, a salesman, and a young boy from Yorkshire.
The boy joined the Army he still writes to us. The salesman was called
up, and he died at sea. I know because two of his five wives got in
touch with us! And the Commander is still here."
"Still here!" That was a piece of luck.
"I'd like to see him, please."
"Surely." She stood up.
"He's aged a lot. I'll take you to his room."
They went up the carpeted stairs to the first floor. She said: While
you're talking to him, I'll look up the last letter from the boy in the
Army." She knocked on the door. It was more than Bloggs' landlady
would have done, he thought wryly.
A voice called: "It's open," and Bloggs went in.
The Commander sat in a chair by the window with a blanket over his
knees. He wore a blazer, a collar and a tie, and spectacles. His hair
was thin, his moustache grey, his skin loose and wrinkled over a face
that might once have been strong. The room was the home of a man
living on memories: there were paintings of sailing ships, a sextant
and a telescope, and a photograph of himself as a boy aboard HMS
Winchester.
"Look at this," he said without turning around.
"Tell me why that chap isn't in the Navy."
Bloggs crossed to the window. A horse-drawn baker's van was at the
kerb outside the house, the elderly horse dipping into its nosebag
while the deliveries were made. That 'chap' was a woman with short
blonde hair in trousers. She had a magnificent bust. Bloggs
laughed.
"It's a woman in trousers," he said.
"Bless my soul, so it is!" The Commander turned around.
"Can't tell, these days, you know. Women in trousers!"
Bloggs introduced himself. We've reopened the case of a murder
committed here in 1940. I believe you lived here at the same time as
the main suspect, one Henry Faber."
"Indeed! What can I do to help?" How well do you remember Faber?"
"Perfectly. Tall chap, dark hair, well-spoken, quiet. Rather shabby
clothes if you were the kind who judges by appearances, you might well
mistake him. I didn't dislike him -wouldn't have minded getting to
know him better, but he didn't want that. I suppose he was about your
age."
Bloggs suppressed a smile: he was used to people assuming he must be
older simply because he was a detective.
The Commander added: "I'm sure he didn't do it, you know. I know a bit
about character you can't command a ship without learning and if that
man was a sex maniac, I'm Hermann Goering."
Bloggs suddenly connected the blonde in trousers with the mistake about
his age, and the conclusion depressed him. He said: "You know, you
should always ask to see a policeman's warrant card."
The Commander was slightly taken aback.
"All right, then, let's have it."
Bloggs opened his wallet and folded it to display the picture of
Christine.
"Here."
The Commander studied it for a moment, then said: "A very good
likeness."
Bloggs sighed. The old man was very nearly blind.
He stood up.
"That's all, for now," he said.
"Thank you."
"Any time. Whatever I can do to help. I'm not much value to England
these days you've got to be pretty useless to get invalided out of the
Home Guard, you know."
"Goodbye." Bloggs went out.
The woman was in the hall downstairs. She handed Bloggs a letter.
"The address is a Forces box number," she said.
"No doubt you'll be able to find out where he is."
"You knew the Commander would be no use," Bloggs said.
"I guessed not. But a visitor makes his day." She opened the door.
On impulse, Bloggs said: Will you have dinner with me?"
A shadow crossed her face.
"My husband is still on the Isle of Man."
"I'm sorry1 thought ' "It's all right. I'm flattered."
"I wanted to convince you we're not the Gestapo." CI know you're not.
A woman alone just gets bitter." Bloggs said: "I lost my wife in the
bombing."
"Then you know how it makes you hate."
"Yes," said Bloggs.
"It makes you hate." He went down the steps. The door closed behind
him. It had started to rain.
It had been raining then. Bloggs was late. He had been going over
some new material with Godliman. Now he was hurrying, so that he would
have half an hour with Christine before she went out to drive her
ambulance. It was dark, and the raid had already started. The things
Christine saw at night were so awful she had stopped talking about
them.
Bloggs was proud of her, proud. The people she worked with said she
was better than two men: she hurtled through blacked-out London,
driving like a veteran, taking corners on two wheels, whistling and
cracking jokes as the city turned to flame around her. Fearless, they
called her. Bloggs knew better: she was terrified, but she would not
let it show. He knew because he saw her eyes in the morning, when he
go
t up and she went to bed; when her guard was down and it was over for
a few hours. He knew it was not fearlessness but courage, and he was
proud.
It was raining harder when he got off the bus. He pulled down his hat
and put up his collar. At a kiosk he bought cigarettes for Christine:
she had started smoking recently, like a lot of women. The shopkeeper
would let him have only five, because of the shortage. He put them in
a Woolworth's bakelite cigarette case.
A policeman stopped him and asked for his identity card: another two
minutes wasted. An ambulance passed him, similar to the one Christine
