The New Eastgate Swing

by Chris Nickson

  ‘Maybe. Maybe not. Like I said, we check up on them and write our report. That’s all. I told her I wanted to talk to my partner first.’

  ‘If you want my vote, I say we accept and keep looking into all this,’ Baker said finally. ‘There’s something going on, we might as well know what it is. We have Miss Harding’s money, too, remember.’

  ‘I said I’d let Mrs Fox know at the start of the week. No rush, is there?’

  ‘Only for this chap who’s missing.’ Baker slid the letter back into his jacket. ‘Whoever he really is.’

  ***

  He was at a loose end, at home alone for the evening. He picked Blue Train from the pile of LPs, John Coltrane weaving magic on tenor sax, working through the sweet, soft changes of the title track. Not blues the way most people thought of them, but an indigo mood that settled in the mind. He stood at the window, staring down at Harrogate Road. Time passed; lights winked out in the shops and the traffic grew lighter.

  The record ended and he let silence take over. He could drift down to Studio 20 later, but somehow it didn’t appeal. As he grew older he was less eager to be out in the evening. Like the song said, he didn’t get around much anymore.

  First, though, some Monk. He’d read that Coltrane was playing with the man now. That would be something to hear. But he’d never raise the money to fly to New York. Or the will. Instead he lowered the stylus on Brilliant Corners, with its fragmented, elliptical beauty. It was music that tugged perfectly at him, drew him out of himself, like someone thrown into the middle of a complex puzzle of time, harmony and melody.

  ***

  The telephone was ringing. He blinked his eyes and glanced at the clock on the bedside table. Quarter past five, the luminous hands read. Still pitch dark. Who the hell could it be at this time?

  There was a chill in the living room, enough to make him shiver as he lifted the receiver.

  ‘I hope this is important,’ he said. There was frost on the outside of the window, making the harsh light of the street lamps blurry.

  ‘I’m not calling you at this hour for my bloody health,’ Baker answered. ‘I’m down at the office. Can you get here?’

  ‘Why? What is it?’

  ‘Just get yourself here.’ He hung up, letting the line buzz.

  ***

  Twenty minutes and Markham was dashing up the stairs on Albion Place. He’d tried to imagine what could be so important and come up with nothing.

  Baker was sitting at the table, a deck of cards laid out for a game of patience, the pipe clamped tight in his jaws.

  ‘This had better be good,’ Markham said.

  ‘Keep your coat on. We’re going somewhere.’

  ‘Stop being so bloody mysterious.’

  ‘You’ll see,’ Baker said from the doorway. ‘Are you coming or are you just going to stand there gawping?’

  They walked down Briggate and turned on to Call Lane, passing the abandoned warehouses that seemed to creak with age. A ginnel brought them out by the river, a hundred yards east of Leeds Bridge. The air was bitter.

  Close by, someone had rigged up some spotlights. Policemen were milling around, uniforms and plain clothes. Markham glanced at Baker, but the man just walked towards the scene, greeting old colleagues he saw.

  A fellow of about fifty took him aside and began to speak quickly in a low voice. Baker nodded then waved Markham over.

  ‘George, meet Dan, my new partner. Dan Markham, this is Inspector George Wills. He’s the one who told Miss Harding to see us. They pulled a body out of the water a couple of hours ago.’

  ‘De Vries?’

  ‘There’s a Dutch label in the jacket. That’s what made me think,’ Wills explained. ‘We’re going to have his landlady come to the mortuary in the morning, see if she can identify him. I was wondering what you two had managed to dig up.’

  ***

  They sat in the canteen at Millgarth Police Station. It was hot, steamy as a Turkish bath, and the smell of bacon and fried bread filled the air. A bright chequered oilcloth covered the table. Half-empty cups of stewed tea sat in front of them. Wills stubbed out his third cigarette and immediately lit another. His fingers had bright nicotine stains and his face belonged to a man who’d been awake far too long, the skin drawn tight over the bones.

  He glanced at the aerogramme once more.

  ‘You’re certain most of this is rubbish?’

  ‘Positive,’ Markham said for the fifth time. He’d forgotten a lot of the German he’d learned, but not everything. Not by a long chalk.

  Wills rubbed his chin. He was about to say something when one of the uniforms entered and handed him a piece of paper.

  ‘They’ve done a quick examination at the body. No sign of any violence. Water in the lungs. Looks like chummy drowned, whoever the hell he is. The coroner will likely go with a verdict of suicide. Miss Harding should be over there now. They’ll ring if there’s a confirmation.’

  ‘And if there’s not?’ Baker asked.

  ‘Back to square one.’ Wills sighed. ‘Not that we’re much past it even if she says it’s him. Why couldn’t the bugger have floated to the other side? Hunslet could have had him then.’ He stood. ‘They won’t be doing the full PM until Monday. I’ll ring you when I know something, Stephen.’

  He walked off, hardly making a sound in a pair of brown suede shoes, head bowed under the weight of it all.

  ‘You think it’s de Vries, don’t you?’ Markham asked.

  ‘I know it is. I can feel it in my water,’ Baker answered.

  ‘Then it’s not our problem any more.’

  ‘Eh?’ Baker turned sharply.

  ‘Miss Harding has her answer as to what happened to him.’

  ‘We can’t leave it like that.’

  ‘She’s hardly going to pay us to find out more,’ Markham pointed out. ‘And we don’t do charity cases. Anyway, we don’t have the resources.’ He put the packet of Craven As in the pocket of his sports jacket. ‘I’m off. There’s nothing more here.’

  On the way back to the car he stopped at the market. Fruit and vegetables from the outside stalls. Carrots and parsnips, apples and pears. A pound of King Edwards, dirt still clinging to the skins.

  There was no rush. He had all Saturday ahead and no plans.

  A couple of chops from one of the butchers, then past the flower seller and up the metal staircase to the cafe. Condensation clung to the windows. He ordered toast and tea and settled by the window, wiping a space clear to look down on the Saturday crowds.

  ‘You’ll make someone a lovely little wife doing the shopping like that.’

  He looked up to see a man holding a cup of coffee and smirking. Trevor Peel. Clever Trevor.

  ‘Haven’t see you in a while, Trev. I was starting to wonder if they’d banged you up again.’

  ‘Nah.’ Uninvited, he sat down. Peel was in his early twenties, hair greased into a high quiff, wearing a donkey jacket and American blue jeans. His sallow cheeks still had faint red spots, the hangover of teenage acne. He brought out tobacco and papers and began to roll a cigarette. ‘I’d have to be a bad lad for them to put me away. I’ve been keeping my nose clean.’

  That was hard to believe. Trevor had been in and out of Armley Jail, a fortnight here, thirty days there. Three months once. All minor things: shoplifting, a scuffle. Once he’d been caught trying to walk out of the music shop in County Arcade with a guitar under his arm.

  ‘Seriously, Mr Markham. I’ve got a good job now. You know Cokely’s out towards Yeadon? I’ve got on with them. They’re talking about sending me to night school,’ he added proudly, and held up a motorcycle helmet. ‘Even bought meself a bike.’

  ‘Given up on the music?’

  They’d met at Studio 20. Markham had wandered in, hoping for jazz and finding skiffle. Trevor had been bouncing up and down like a lunatic, a broad grin on his face.

  ‘Those are my mates,’ he’d said to anyone who’d listen. ‘They got it, don’t they?’
<
br />   What they had was the standard tea chest bass and washboard. But the guitarist had rhythm, some basic ability, and a voice that sounded genuinely American.

  ‘They’re going to have me with them as soon as I learn to play,’ Trevor added. That had been over a year ago.

  ‘Can’t get the hang of it, Mr Markham. It’s like my fingers don’t want to do what I tell them, you know?’

  Since the first meeting he’d run into Trevor here and there. A pub, a cafe, twice more at Studio 20. The lad had gone down to listen to some jazz but left before the first set ended.

  ‘It turns me head around,’ he complained. ‘It just sounds wrong.’

  There was no real malice in him, he just liked taking a chance here and there, being a devil. Perhaps he was older and wiser now, settling down a bit.

  ‘You like the job, then?’

  ‘I do,’ Trevor answered with an emphatic nod. ‘Simple stuff right now, like, but it has prospects. I’m learning things.’

  ‘What about those friends of yours in the group? Are they still playing?’

  ‘Youth club dance tonight. It’s working out all right for them. I tell you, Mr Markham, they’re going to be big.’

  ***

  Back at the flat he put his purchases away and switched on the immersion heater for a bath. Georgina had a gig tonight at the Trocadero and he’d be there, the way he always was. He’d known the club three years before when it was called the Kit Kat, owned by the man who’d ruined his fingers.

  That was history, he told himself. Put it away.

  The hot water was already running when the telephone bell started ringing.

  ‘It’s definitely him,’ Baker said. ‘Miss Harding identified him.’

  ***

  He wasn’t going to think about it again until Monday morning.

  Instead he sat in the corner at the Trocadero and listened to Georgina play and sing her heart out. She looked glamorous in a long black gown, her hair glossy and glowing under the lights. Two sets, finishing the first by looking straight at Markham as she made ‘Lover Come Back To Me’ into a smouldering fire of sensuality.

  During the break she sat with him, sipping a glass of bitter lemon. It kept away the Romeos and allowed her to relax. The audience had quickly warmed to her, applauding and listening intently to each song.

  She was playing as well as he’d ever heard her, letting her solos stretch out, teasing and pulling at the tunes, inventive and fluid. By the end of the evening, when she took another bow, her face was flushed with pleasure.

  ***

  The office felt Monday-morning stuffy, as if the radiator had been throwing out heat all weekend. He left the door and window open, trying to cool the place off.

  By the time Baker arrived the temperature was liveable.

  ‘De Vries,’ the big man said. No good morning, no how was your weekend. Straight down to business.

  ‘It’s over,’ Markham told him.

  ‘No, it’s not,’ Baker corrected him. ‘I popped up and had a word with Miss Harding yesterday, after she got home from church. She was still upset about having to identify him.’

  ‘Then what else can there be?’

  ‘She wants us to find out who he really was.’

  ‘What?’ That was hard to believe. And how would they even start? He lit a cigarette and leaned back in his chair. The window was still cracked, just enough to allow a little frigid air inside. ‘Why?’

  ‘She doesn’t have anyone. Never married. No kids. Parents long dead and she’s an only child.’ He shrugged. ‘Maybe she took a shine to the poor bugger, I don’t know.’ Baker brought a leather wallet from his inside pocket and brought out four five-pound notes. ‘She paid for four more days.’

  ‘That’s fine. But how are we going to find out about him? We’ve got nothing to go on, in case you’ve forgotten.’

  ‘George Wills is going to ring me when he’s heard from the immigration people. It’s a start. And I took a gander at the magazine he got through the post. It’s engineering, but quite specialised.’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘As far as I can make out, it could have something to do with aeronautics.’

  ‘We don’t have any aircraft factories around here.’

  ‘Not now, maybe’ Baker agreed. ‘We used to, though. Blackburn’s on Roundhay Road, and that secret Avro place in Yeadon.’

  ‘What Avro place?’ He’d never heard of it. Secret?

  ‘Just by the aerodrome. They made Lancaster and Ansons there. All very hush-hush, camouflaged and everything. They called it a shadow factory.’ He laughed. ‘They even drained the tarn out there to make it hard to spot, then put a false duck pond on the roof and fake cows that they’d move around every day or two. Fooled the Jerries, right enough.’

  ‘But they’re not making anything there any more.’

  ‘Not since the war. No need. I’ve no idea what they do now. It was a huge place, though. I was out there once, someone was nicking bits and pieces as they were dismantling the place. After I was demobbed.’

  ‘That still doesn’t help us find out more about de Vries, or whoever he was.’

  ‘We’ll get there,’ Baker said confidently. ‘I’ve had to deal with worse.’

  ‘And I’ll give Amanda Fox a ring. Tell her we’re in.’

  ‘Amanda is it now?’ Baker raised his eyebrows and smirked. ‘Better not let that lass of yours find out about her, Danny.’

  ***

  She asked him to come over to the Fox and Co. office to discuss the details. A winter wind scoured the Headrow, strong enough for him to hang on to his hat at times. He cut through to Great George Street, past the infirmary and up the hill to Woodhouse Square.

  It must have been a grand house at one time. These days, though, the building was all offices, and the exterior had an air of genteel decay. Not as wealthy as Park Square, with its solicitors, dentists, and doctors, but still for the moderately well-heeled. He pressed the bell and climbed a wide staircase when she buzzed him in.

  Shiny Burmantofts tiles in greens and browns lined the walls of the hall. The office door was open, an invitation. A two-room suite with a bow window that looked down over the city centre. It was intended to impress and it did the trick.

  Today Amanda Fox wore a dress in two shades of grey velvet that accented her figure. A knowing smile flickered across her lips. He settled next to her on a leather sofa. A manila file sat on the coffee table.

  ‘I’m so glad we’re going to be working together, Dan,’ she began. ‘I know Mark will be, too.’

  ‘Good.’ It seemed like the only answer he could offer. ‘How did he end up doing this kind of thing?’

  ‘Oh, he was SOE during the war.’ She said it lightly, as if it was of no consequence. But Markham knew better. During his National Service he’d heard tales about the agents of the Special Operations Executive. They were tough, deadly, working behind enemy lines half the time. If Mark Fox survived that and the aftermath when the war was over, he’d have come to know important people. He’d have value.

  ‘I’m interested in the details of the job,’ he told her, ‘and what you want from us.’

  She tapped red-painted nails on the folder.

  ‘That’s the bumf on five people who’ve come over from Germany to work around Leeds. There’s everything about each of them in there, including photographs.’ She paused a second. ‘When you were in Germany did you ever come across the Fragebogen?’

  ‘Of course.’ It was the long questionnaire all Germans had to fill out to get the card proving they weren’t Nazis, the Entlastungsschien. He’d seen a few, dealt with a small number, trying to catch men out here and there. By and large he’d never paid much attention to them; it hadn’t been his real field.

  ‘They’re in there, too. I hope your German’s still good enough to read them.’

  He gave her a smile.

  ‘I’ll manage.’

  ‘We want you to do some background. Ask around about
them,’ Amanda Fox told him. ‘Keep it all on the QT.’

  ‘All right,’ Markham agreed. ‘But why?’

  ‘Follow up,’ she explained. ‘Find out if they’re all being good boys and write me a little report on each one.’

  ‘Are you expecting a problem with any of them?’ He wasn’t about to mention de Vries. See if his name was in there first.

  ‘Not really. None of them were Nazis, not involved with the Reds. But I don’t have the skill, and Mark is over in West Germany again. He’s the one who suggested you, in fact. He asked around a bit.’

  Markham riffled through the paperwork. Quite deliberately, he hardly glanced at the pictures, then placed the folder on his lap.

  ‘It seems straightforward.’

  ‘Good.’ She placed a hand on his and let it rest there a moment too long. She seemed to veer between the seductive and the professional. It was disconcerting, annoying, as if she was trying to play him like a fish. ‘One more thing. You’ll find that they all seem to come from other countries, ones the Germans overran. I’m sure you can understand why. We’ve changed the names in some cases.’

  ‘Of course.’ No one was going to admit they were from Germany. Not if they wanted to get by in England.

  ‘Right. Shall we say you report back on Friday?’ Businesslike again, a quicksilver change.

  ‘That’s fine.’

  He hurried back to the office on Albion Place. Only then did he open the folder and draw out one set of papers, everything held together by a paper clip. The photograph was clear enough. He knew the face. He’d seen it on Saturday morning on the bank of the River Aire, lifeless and empty.

  Amanda Fox evidently hadn’t learnt yet that the man was dead.

  Reading quickly he went through the information on Dieter de Vries. Real name Dieter Vreiten; fairly close to his alias. Born in Berlin in 1915. He’d spent the war working as an engineer on several projects connected with aircraft. He’d been a member of the Nazi party, but that meant nothing; it was probably just a condition of his employment and survival.

  Much of the language was too technical for him to understand. Something to do with developing lightweight armour for aeroplanes, as far as he could make out. His wife had died during an RAF bombing raid. Brought out of East Germany. Arrived in England 1955. Interesting, he thought.