DANCING WITH ARTIE
BY
PETE HEATHMOOR
Kindle Edition
Text copyright © 2015 by Pete Heathmoor
All Rights Reserved
This book is a work of fiction and any resemblance to persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental. The characters are productions of the author’s imagination and used fictitiously.
Table of Contents.
Prologue.
Chapter 1 - Chessel Street.
Chapter 2 - The Gorge Hotel.
Chapter 3 - The Red Lion.
Chapter 4 - Camp 876.
Chapter 5 - The Monkey-Puzzle.
Chapter 6 - Günter Grass.
Chapter 7 - Flash Village.
Chapter 8 - The Crossroads.
Chapter 9 - The Escape.
Chapter 10 - Flash Farm.
Chapter 11 - Flash House.
Chapter 12 - An Evening at Flash House.
Chapter 13 – Misty Encounters.
Chapter 14 - Where are they?
Chapter 15 - Confessions.
Chapter 16 - Flash Chapel.
Chapter 17 - Lost Causes.
Chapter 18 - Honeysuckle Cottage.
Chapter 19 - The War Room.
Chapter 20 - The Journal.
Chapter 21 - The Portrait.
Chapter 22 – Methodists in the Madness.
Chapter 23 - The Barley Mow.
Chapter 24 - Unravelling of Yarn.
Chapter 25 - The New Broom.
Chapter 26 - A Clean Pair of Heels.
Chapter 27 - The Gulley.
Chapter 28 - Gathering Forces.
Chapter 29 - The Schoolhouse.
Chapter 30 - All the Little Children.
Chapter 31 - The Reckoning.
Chapter 32 - The Edgar Club.
Chapter 33 - Messages in the Post.
Chapter 34 – Sunday Roasting.
Chapter 35 – The Last Laugh.
Author’s Note.
Prologue.
3rd June 1940.
“Who’s the lieutenant?” The medical orderly held the clipboard in his blooded hand, his back braced against the sweating bulkhead as the overloaded ship rolled sluggishly in the Channel swell. He focused his attention upon the medical form, blotting out the beseeching cries of the wounded.
“63666073 Hunloke, T. C. And I’m captain, you idiot, battlefield promotion! Just didn’t get around to sewing on the third crown...”
The second orderly grasped the green and red pressed fibre identification discs from around the wounded officer’s neck and relayed the impressed information to the recorder. “... And he’s C of E.”
“Good,” replied the first orderly, jotting down the information hurriedly. “Don’t need no last rites then. Bloody nuisance...”
“What the hell do I need the Last Rites for? I’ll put you on a bloody fizzer for insubordination!”
“Doc reckons it’s fifty-fifty whether the poor sod makes it or not. He’s lost a lot of blood. Reckons he might lose an eye. He’ll lose that leg for sure,” declared the second orderly.
“Right, that’s it, jankers for the pair of you! You’ll be peeling spuds ‘til Christmas!”
“Makes a lot of noise for someone at death’s door...,” suggested the junior orderly, tucking the ID discs away in the bloodstained officer’s tunic.
The senior medic stared dispassionately with tired, red-rimmed eyes down upon the dying man, the bandages swathing the wounded officer’s face muffled the words of delirium. “That’s the morphine. The lieutenant’s away with the fairies. Best place for him.”
“I told you, I’m a bloody captain, not a lieutenant! I need to get back to my men, not lie here like a damned invalid!”
“Poor bastard...,” muttered the second orderly.
“At least he made it to a boat. Plenty of ‘em didn’t... Bloody shithole. What was that place called?”
“Dunkirk.”
“Aye, Dunkirk... Right royal balls up...,” muttered the orderly, scratching something on the form with his almost blunt pencil. “I hope you’ve been practicing your German. They’ll be marching down the Mall by the end of the month. What’s the time?”
“02:30”
“Date?”
“Must be the third of June...”
The first man scribbled the date on the medical form. “Well, he’ll be lucky to see the fourth. Who’s next...?”
Chapter 1 - Chessel Street.
2nd August 1944.
“Do you suppose your friend has more rabbits?” she asked.
“He wasn’t my friend, just someone we charged with profiteering,” he replied distractedly, stirred from one of his frequent flashbacks.
“I don’t care who he was. Has he any more rabbits?”
The cuckoo clock on the kitchen wall of his terraced home in Chessel Street chimed the half hour and Thaddeus Hunloke sighed, pushing his hand back through his blonde Brylcreemed hair. The scar scouring his left cheek and eyebrow itched as it often did and he tried not to read any hidden auguries into the facial discomfort.
Neither did he want to eat the bacon fried by his ever-complaining wife. The fatty rasher had been incinerated to within an inch of its late life, making it impossible to differentiate fat from meat. He idly wondered how much of the meat ration had been wasted on the piece of inedible flesh.
“No, Elsa, there are no more rabbits...” He made the effort to sound affable and failed miserably.
“If you were pushier, we might have got another brace.” Elsa Hunloke made no attempt to conceal her derision.
“I’ll try and get away early tonight; I’m due time back after the Haslett case.” He swallowed the last piece of bacon with as few chews as possible, washing it down with a mouthful of lukewarm tea.
“And what would be the point of that?”
“I thought we might go to the pictures. ‘Oh, Mr Porter!’ is showing at the Roxy. You like that film.”
“I’m not going to watch a comedy, not with all that’s going on, it wouldn’t be right,” declared Elsa. Hunloke thought it best not to pursue the subject. He lit a Player’s Navy Cut cigarette and grated his chair away from the breakfast table. “And I do wish you wouldn’t smoke at the table, Thaddeus. It’s so common and bad for your chest.”
“Sorry, liebschen...” He coughed in affirmation of her prognosis. He didn’t give a damn.
Of late, her pronounced German accent grated on his nerves. With an effort, he pushed himself up from the table. His left leg always felt stiffest in the morning. On a good day, the rigidity would ease slightly. He might even forget about the impairment and become oblivious to the limp that flavoured his gangly gait. Unfortunately, the good days were few and far between. Even prior to being wounded, the six foot one inch tall Hunloke would never have been described as being graceful.
“Have we anything different for the chickens to eat?” he asked for the want of anything better to say.
“We’ve some potato peelings.”
“I’ll see what I can pick up today. Somebody is bound to have some scraps.”
“Little Daisy has stopped laying.”
“We’ll give her a week; otherwise she’s for the pot.”
“Oh, Thaddeus, you can be so cruel!”
He regretted his hasty choice of words. The threat was genuine enough but he wished he had chosen them with grater care. Attempting any conversation with Elsa was like walking on eggshells, clearly not Daisy’s.
“Sorry, love...” His apology was sincere yet ineptly delivered.
The tears began to flow. It took little to make Elsa Hunloke cry. He might at one time
have hobbled awkwardly around the table and offered her a consoling hug. Those days had long since vanished.
“I’d best be off,” he declared, “don’t want to miss the bus. Will you be seeing Muriel today?”
Elsa dabbed away her tears with a hankie and blew her nose. He listened impatiently to her muffled reply. “No, she’s coming here. She wants to avoid the man from the Pru.”
He nodded. He was about to reach for his suit jacket hanging on the back of his chair when he hesitated. His scar was itching like fury. He had no idea what motivated him, uncertain as to why he limped around to the other side of the breakfast table. He leant over and kissed Elsa on her cheek.
“What was that for?" demanded Elsa whilst pushing him away. "Don’t you go thinking I’ll be looking for any of your favours tonight!”
He grinned resignedly. “See you later, love. Give my best to Muriel. And don’t go lending her any more money. I’m only a bloody inspector!”
He left the terraced house on Chessel Street, an East End road untouched by German aerial bombardment, and ambled without any degree of purpose to the bus stop. The bus was busier than usual. He hated the malodorous morning rush hour, preferring to have walked had it been a viable option. Langport Road was not the most salubrious police station in London. Like a good deal of the capital’s buildings, it was crying out for more than a little TLC. The station was undermanned and oversubscribed.
There was an urban myth encouraged by the government that the wartime police service was at full strength. Perhaps on paper that was the case, volunteers performing vital duties during the hostilities. From a CID point of view, Hunloke was the entire manpower on offer. Admittedly, Scotland Yard assumed responsibility for the most serious cases. He had himself been a Scotland Yard detective until his department had fallen foul of a new broom when he found himself transferred to Langport Road.
“Brew, sir?”
Hunloke glanced towards his office door and the smiling face of PC Mathews. “Thanks, Bob, that’ll be champion. Oh, Bob?” Mathews spun around to face his superior.
“Sir?”
“Don’t suppose there are any more rabbits...?” The question was made with a slewed smile, the scarred left hand side of Hunloke’s face lacked the elasticity of its right hand counterpart.
“Sorry, sir. We’ll have to hope we find some other rabbit keeper dabbling in the black market!”
“You never know your luck... Anything come in over night?”
“Doodlebug hit Balaclava Terrace. Three houses destroyed. Seven dead. Oh, got two in the cells. Looting on Thanet Street. Up before the magistrate this morning.”
Hunloke remembered the daily newspaper’s exhortation from 1940. ‘Hang A Looter And Stop This Filthy Crime!’ He smiled sardonically. “We should be armed, just shoot the bastards and have done with it.”
Mathews assumed Hunloke was joking.
“I’ll fetch you a mug of char, sir. You’ll feel better for it.” PC Mathews departed with a pronounced swing of the hip. Like Hunloke, he had been wounded in action, in his case during the North African Campaign. Unlike Hunloke, he had been a police officer before the war. Hunloke had served as a regular in the Army before being invalided out after Dunkirk. His war service had been brief and bloody. He often wondered what he had done to deserve winding up as an inspector at Langport Road. The war had a lot to answer for.
The in-tray on his desk bore testimony to the far from law-abiding state of the city. The crime rate had soared since the commencement of hostilities. Amongst the manila folders of petty felonies lay several crimes of a more onerous nature. He knew in his heart that the reported crime statistics were a fraction of what had occurred on the blacked-out streets.
No one was really sure of the number of murders that had been committed during the time of the Blitz, when bodies were often dumped on bombsites, masquerading as Luftwaffe victims. Few autopsies had been performed at the height of the bombing campaign. He himself had been involved in the case of the man who strangled his wife in April 1941 and buried her in the rubble of a bomb-damaged building. Unfortunately, the murderer didn’t know the difference between quicklime and builder’s lime; he used the latter, which preserved the body. When the corpse was discovered and the pathologist called in, it was clear the woman had been strangled. It took only twenty minutes for the jury to find the husband guilty and send him for an appointment with the hangman.
Organised crime was flourishing under a semi-respectable veil of the black market. Outwardly condemned by all, few could resist the lure of the forbidden fruit that fronted the activities of powerful organised crime syndicates. It was amazing how the rich didn’t seem to be affected by the imposition of rationing.
God, how he missed the simple, disciplined life of the Army.
The morning eased towards midday. Despite his frequent enquiring glances through the frosted glass window to where PC Mathews sat behind the station sergeant’s front desk, the constable had failed to transfer a single call to his office.
The next file Hunloke opened related to the Doodlebug strike on Balaclava Terrace. At approximately 04:30, a V1 had flown over the city from its launch site in the Pas de Calais, flying at an altitude of some 2,000 feet, at a speed of around 400 miles per hour. The offbeat Argus pulse jet engine fell silent and the missile tumbled clumsily to earth where over 1,800 pounds of Amatol-39 exploded.
The missiles were insidious, indiscriminate weapons. Somehow, the impersonal delivery method of the high explosive seemed beyond the pale to Hunloke. If this was the future of warfare, then God help mankind.
The V1’s had been falling on London since early June and it said much for the stoicism and bloody mindedness of the Londoners that life appeared to carry on regardless. Of course it didn’t. The brutal truth was that many of those who could get out of the city had. Many more citizens could not afford such a luxury. Perhaps it was the knowledge that the war seemed to be finally tipping the way of the Allies that imbued the vengeance weapons with such menace, elevating their strategic value way beyond the desultory figure of only twenty percent of the launches actually reaching the city.
He allowed himself the luxury of a third cigarette of the day. He missed his military tobacco allowance. His bored mind wandered as it often did of late. Whilst following the drifting cigarette smoke, he pictured the blue-tinged atmosphere illuminated by a cinema projector, the beam of light piercing the dense haze concocted by hundreds of consumed cigarettes. He was in an anonymous cinema with his arm around Elsa. She was giggling as she all too readily did at one time, chortling to the antics of Will Hay, in the comedy ‘Oh, Mr Porter!’
Elsa laughed a good deal until the war came along. She laughed a good deal less when Hunloke returned home wounded from Dunkirk and she was compelled to face the special tribunal that labelled her as a category C low-risk alien national. She stopped laughing entirely when their six-year-old son, Harry died from Scarlet Fever. Elsa had refused to have him evacuated and he had survived the Blitz only to be struck down by childhood illness. Was it only eighteen months ago?
The Bakelite phone on the desk rang, startling him back to reality. His scar was itching when he picked up the receiver.
“Yes, Mathews?”
“Sir...”
“What is it, constable?”
“Sir...”
“Spit it out, man!” demanded the inspector irritably.
“Sir.... A doodlebug has landed.”
A pause that could have lasted a thousand years for all Hunloke cared ensued.
“Sir... Are you still there?”
“Yes, Mathews.”
“Sir, it fell on Chessel Street...”
Chapter 2 - The Gorge Hotel.
November 1944.
It was an odd notion that occurred to the preoccupied man who strolled along the pavement on his way to the Clifton Suspension Bridge. Away from London for the first time in almost two years, he felt a curious sense of detachment. He knew Bristol had been bombed,
the old heart of the city destroyed, but here in the Georgian suburb of Clifton, he could imagine another time. If he looked closely, he could see the signs of the war ravaged country about him but he chose not to. He embraced the feeling of freedom that came with being away from the capital.
Brian Conway had been told he could expect to find Inspector Thaddeus Hunloke up at the bridge. Hunloke was in the habit of walking around Clifton Down in the morning, ending his perambulations at Brunel’s famous suspension bridge. Conway had never met Hunloke and yet from the given description, he doubted he could miss him.
Oddly, despite the fine weather, there were relatively few people visiting the bridge. Conway, unsure if he had to pay a toll, flashed his identity card at the attendant at the Clifton tollbooth.
The bridge was a surprisingly impressive sight. The Egyptian inspired support tower rose with imperious might. He smiled at his own made up inscription at the top of the pinnacle. ‘Look on my works ye mighty and despair.’ His smile attracted the attention of a young mother wheeling an infant in a pram. She sheepishly returned his smile, prompting him to speculate whether she was a fellow admirer of the works by Shelley.
Conway recognised the left hand profile of the thirty-one year old police inspector at once. He cut an imposing figure, standing in excess of six feet, with Brylcreemed blonde hair. He was unable to discern the pale blue eyes but the ragged scar earned during the early campaigns of the BEF was all too clear. The man issued a rebellious air thanks to his lack of headwear.
Usually a fan of the metal studs embedded in the heels of his shoes, Conway regretted their sharp click upon the lichen encrusted paving slabs beneath his feet. Any covert approach was out of the question.
Thaddeus Hunloke remained staring with apparent fascination down towards the working docks of Bristol’s Floating Harbour. Conway halted beside the blonde and shared the view.
“Have you got a fag...?” It was not the opening gambit Brian Conway had expected to hear from the inspector with a dubious reputation.
Dancing with Artie (Thaddeus Hunloke Book 1) Page 1
