by Stuart Slade
Only then did he realize he was weeping with shame and humiliation.
Hours later, he was cold and stiff from being braced against the door. The sounds of the riot had long since faded away, leaving him alone and sickened. It was safe to leave; safe to pick his way back through the streets towards the College and its halls of residence. It was strange; for all the fear, terror and violence there was little actual evidence of what had happened. The buildings seemed undamaged in the twilight. There were no shattered windows or broken doors. A broken streetlight was unusual enough to draw his attention. There were small dark puddles that he kept well away from. That was all he saw of the aftermath from the afternoon that had changed his life.
Back in his room, he was sitting, staring at the wall when there was a polite knock on the door. That was unusual. This was a hall of residence and people tended to barge in without knocking and apologize later. But, the whole area was like that, stunned by what had happened. It was as if common courtesy was a refuge people retreated to in order to deal with what happened.
“David. Thank God you’re all right.” Colin Thomas was an old friend of his. “We knew you were up near the front and thought you might have had it. It’s a nightmare out there; those bastard Blackshirts …”
“How many?” Newton could barely speak.
“Dozens got beaten up and arrested. We know of three dead so far. George got shot at the bridge, right at the start. Freddie too. Shot in the back as he ran.” Thomas hesitated, his voice shaking and his eyes wet. “David, you were walking out with Rachael weren’t you? I’m sorry; a group of six Blackshirts cornered her. One of them recognized her, knew she was Jewish. The bastards knocked her down and started kicking her, right there in the street. A couple of the lads saw it, but they were too far away to help. By the time they got there, she was dead and the Blackshirts had legged it. I’m so sorry. Anyway, you’re all right. Look, I’ve got to go. We’re still trying to find out where everybody is and get an idea of who has been arrested.”
The door closed. Newton stared at the mirror, guilt at what he inevitably saw as his craven cowardice ripping at his soul. Very, very quietly he made himself a promise. Never, never, never again will I turn my back on somebody who needs protection.
He didn’t see his own reflection in the mirror. Instead he saw his memories. The girl who, when the student’s canteen had served bangers and mash, had given away her pork sausages to her friends. Her great beaming smile when the students had got together to buy her a proper kosher meal in return. Her lying helpless on the ground, her ribs kicked in by men wearing hobnailed boots while he had cowered behind a door.
He realized he had something very important to do. Something that mixed atonement and vengeance, and was more than a little of both.
Queen’s Road, Nottingham, United Kingdom
The woman walked with the practiced swing of an experienced prostitute. This was Sally’s beat, her comer of Queen’s Road and Arkwright Street. It was a good corner; lots of traffic and the entrance to the station was close enough for her to pick up travelling trade. There was even a pub with rooms opposite and she had a working agreement with the landlord. She didn’t embarrass him by plying for trade in his bar, but she could rent one of his rooms by the hour and use the side door to get in. The fact she had such a good spot wasn’t by chance. She paid the local ‘Firm’ their protection money without argument, didn’t try to hold out on them and never stole from her clients. The Firm was a loose organization of local criminals who controlled the underworld in Nottingham. Every city had its firm, under one name or another. Some were relatively benign, others vicious. Nottingham had one of the better firms. She played straight with them; they played straight with her. They’d given her a good pitch and trusted her enough to send some of their better clients to her.
Things were changing in Nottingham. They had been ever since the Auxiliaries had arrived. What had been a pleasant, friendly city had turned into one with the brooding air of menace typical of a city under occupation. The Auxiliaries weren’t police any more; not after the way they had smashed the demonstration. They were an occupation force and were regarded with sullen hatred.
Sally saw two of them approaching down Queen’s Road. They were thick on the streets, had been ever since the riot the other side of town. The official line was that some students had started a brawl and the Auxiliaries had broken it up; but there were uglier rumors than that. Like students who had been arrested but had then vanished without explanation.
“Hey, Johnsie, you want some of this?”
One of the Auxiliaries grabbed her arm and spun her around. He grabbed her hair and pulled her head back so his partner could see her face in the yellow glow of the streetlight.
“You joking? Never know what you’ll catch from a tom.” The Blackshirt called Johnsie looked disgusted. “I’ll bet it’s rotting away down there.”
“Nah, this one’s clean. And she’s going to give me a free ride to prove it. Aren’t you love?”
“Look, I…”
“Because, if you don’t … Remember what we did to that Jew-girl? You’ll get the same.”
Sally sighed and led the Auxiliary over to the side door of the pub. The other Auxiliary shook his head and leaned up against the wall, waiting for his partner to finish. The streets were empty, almost. It was too early to be crowded from people going home after a night out, too late for the back-from-work crowd. He turned around, wondering how long he was going to have to stay around out here when a youngster bumped into him. He smelled of beer and was obviously very drunk. He put his arm around Johnsie’s shoulders and breathed heavily into the Auxiliary Policeman’s face.
“You gave them students a seeing-to didn’t ya mate. Stuck up gits, they all are. Deserve what they got. Let me buy you a drink.” The youngster tried to push a ten shilling note into the Blackshirt’s pocket. For a moment, the Blackshirt tried to push the young man away. He hesitated; ten shillings was ten shillings.
The hand with the banknote clamped over his mouth. He felt an agonizing pain in his back. Newton thrust the carving knife into Johnsie’s liver. He twisted it around. It left the Blackshirt bleeding to death so fast he could feel his life draining from him. Newton let the body fall to the ground, then reached down and took the .38 Webley from the man’s belt.
That was when he heard the side door of the pub slam.
The second Blackshirt was looking down at him from the step. He fumbled with the revolver holstered at his waist. A woman was standing beside him; one hand raised to cover her mouth, her eyes wide with shock. Newton didn’t hesitate. He brought the Webley up and fired a single shot that took the Auxiliary in the forehead.
“Get out of here lad. That shot will bring the law. The real law.” Newton backed away and then looked at the woman. One cheek was reddened and her lips were slightly swollen. There was a long pause. She nodded very slightly.
“Yeah, I did what he wanted and he smacked me around anyway. Why d’ya do it, lad?”
“The girl they killed? She was my girl. I didn’t realize it was them though.”
“Yeah, word is they were a couple of Mosley’s boys before they joined the Auxiliary, so I heard. Those two have been beating on a lot of the toms here. They’ve really got the Firm mad at them. The cops will think that the Firm did it as a lesson to the others. The Firm won’t care who did. Saved them the job, you see. You’re in the clear, this time. Now, scat.”
Sally was only two years older then Newton, but her years working the street gave her voice an timbre of experience that brought an immediate result. Newton dropped the revolver and left. As he ran around the corner, he heard the first blast of police whistles.
Bestwood Lodge, Arnold, Nottinghamshire, United Kingdom
“Nasty case.” Fleming read the newspaper account and shook his head. “Still, if the Blackshirts go around beating up the local toms, they can expect the Firm to get upset about it. The word is that the police have already conclud
ed this was a gangland killing and are just going through the motions. If it had been one of their own, it would have been different, of course. They’d be tearing the town apart and there would be help coming in from every police force in England. But, Blackshirts? Police don’t really care one way or the other about what happens to them. The only witness they’ve got is a tom who says the first one was dead when she came out and the one with her was shot from the shadows. She didn’t seem to care much either.”
“And the Firm aren’t denying it was them. Suits everybody for that to be the official verdict.” Calvert was relaxed in an armchair. Where the local Firm was one of the more reasonable sort, they and the local police would have a tacit agreement over boundaries and conduct. Burglaries in unoccupied houses received little police attention as long as the local people were safe when inside their homes and could walk the streets at night safely. Toms could ply their trade as long as they did so in an agreed area away from decent people. Unwritten agreements that accepted some things so that worse ones could be avoided. Calvert was already establishing discrete contacts with Nottingham’s local Firm.
“That wasn’t what happened and you know it.”
The Duke stared at the wall, trying to work out how he felt about what had happened. Two dead men, even if they were Blackshirts, was a lot to swallow.
“The whisper is, those were two of the Blackshirts responsible for killing that girl in the riot a couple of days ago. Seems like one of the lads decided to take the law into his own hands. Done both of them in.” Calvert grinned. “One unarmed, untrained lad against two armed men and he gets them both. That lad has promise.”
“We can’t justify …” The Duke was still appalled by the reality that was opening in front of him.
“Oh yes we can.”
Fleming spoke coldly; there was no mercy in his manner. “Did you see what they did to that poor girl? You often hear people say it, but this time it was true. They beat her so badly, even her own mother couldn’t recognize her. And even that doesn’t matter.
“What does matter is that the Auxiliaries are going to be running scared and angry now. They’ll be even more aggressive, even more unreasonable. They watch the official police doing next to nothing about the killings. That makes them livid. They’ll throw their weight around even more and, all the time, be watching out for the next likely lad with a knife or a gun. They’ll treat everybody as a potential killer and, that’ll make people hate them even more and build up support for the Resistance. And that’ll set the Auxiliaries off even more. You see how the spiral goes from there?”
“I do.” The Duke hated what he was hearing, but it rang terribly true. “But this was still murder. What sort of world are we creating?”
“Nothing that hasn’t been created for hundreds of years. Your Grace, there’s going to be a Resistance; that is as sure as anything can be. This is just the start. It’s going to get worse. A time is coming when this kind of thing is normal. That Man thinks he stopped a war with his armistice, but he hasn’t. He’s started one; only it’s being fought here, not on a battlefield a long way away. Once the Germans arrive, it will be a real war. What’s just happened here has done so over and over again, all over Europe. We’ve been so far removed from it, we’ve forgotten the reality. Now we’re learning it again. We’re lucky in a way; we’ve got time to prepare and get things ready. A year ago, that lad wouldn’t have dreamed of killing two men. Not in his wildest nightmares. A year ago, what he did would have been to commit two foul murders. A twelve-month later, it is now a courageous act of resistance. Now he’s made that leap, we can recruit him, train him and use him. Make sure he kills the right people in future; not that he didn’t, this time.
“That Man has changed the rules and he doesn’t realize how much yet. We’re in the middle of the change right now. It’s happening all over the country. Up in Scotland, there are already areas the Auxiliaries dare not go, for fear of a pistol shot in the darkness. And as for Northern Ireland, when an IRA man shoots down an Auxiliary, the Protestants cheer him on. You wanted to start a resistance movement? Well, it’s started. Now, we find that lad and bring him into the fold. Through a couple of cut-outs, of course.”
Fleming sighed and helped himself to a brandy, to recover from his outburst. The frustration at having to explain such things was genuine, but it was mixed up with despair at the dark, dismal future he could see coming. People think a resistance movement is glamorous and exciting. When they learn the truth about just how dirty a business it is, the realization always sickens them and they still don’t know the worst of it. They have no idea what is to come and it’s probably better that way. God help us all. England won’t be a green and pleasant land again, not in my lifetime.
Calvert took another drink. “Oh yes, that lad has promise. Just what we’re looking for, in fact. Motivated.”
CHAPTER TWELVE: THE HEART OF THE MATTER
Infantry Company, Second Battalion, 16e Regiment d’Infanterie Coloniale, RC-157, French Indochina
“Cowardice! Unforgiveable cowardice!”
Captain Gregoire Dieudonne crashed his fist on the table to give emphasis to his words. In front of him, Jourdain Roul stood to attention, trying to keep his temper under control. He was uneasily aware that a good part of him agreed with his Captain’s assessment. The company was formed up around a small hamlet; one so small, it didn’t even have an official name. Its importance was limited to the fact that it was here that RC-157 made a 90-degree switch in direction from south to due east and crossed a small stream. The curve of the stream and the arc of the road offered what appeared to be a good defensive position; on the surface, anyway. His experiences earlier in the day gave Roul good reason to doubt that.
“Do you have any explanation for your actions? Or must I assume that you are English?” Dieudonne was bright red with rage. Still, his words gave Roul a chance to explain himself.
“Sir, our position was untenable. The Siamese had occupied the high ground to the north and were making undisturbed artillery practice on my right. Their infantry demonstrated against my center, pinning it in place, while they advanced to cut the road in my rear. They had tanks in support. There was nothing I could do. If we had remained in place, we would have been cut off and forced to surrender.”
Roul took a deep breath. “Sir, our position here is in equal danger. The Siamese are not advancing along the road, to the exclusion of everything else. They are methodically occupying the ridge to the north, parallel to RC-157. They are doing that while we speak. If they haven’t occupied Hill 168, they will soon. From there, they can bring their guns up again. Captain, I must urgently recommend we detach a unit to secure Hill 168.”
Dieudonne stared at the map, running permutations through his mind. Despite his behavior towards Roul, he was actually quite sympathetic to the young Lieutenant’s dilemma. The French defensive plan had been based on the border battalions forming a series of roadblocks along the key east-west highways that would pin down the Thai forces. Then, the core of the Indochina army would counterattack, envelop their left flank and drive them back. The problem was that the whole plan was built around the assumption that the Thais would keep to the roads. Obviously, they weren’t doing that at all.
Dieudonne knew more about what was going on around him than Roul, although he was unpleasantly aware that his picture was very incomplete. He suspected that the disappearance of the Third Battalion, Tirailleurs Tonkinois had been caused by the same sequence of events that had taken place at Phoum Kham Reng. Only, the Tirailleurs hadn’t disengaged and had been swallowed up in place. If Roul hadn’t disengaged, his platoon wouldn’t be here now. On the other hand, if he had remained in place, his sacrifice would have bought Dieudonne more time to prepare his defenses. Sometimes there were no good options.
“If you had held your position as ordered, I might have had time to do just that. The option is no longer open to us. We will have to extend our position on our right to defend against
an envelopment. Take your platoon and prepare defensive positions on our extreme right. And Lieutenant, do not believe that your position on the right of the line means your actions today are considered creditable.”
Lieutenant Roul snapped out a salute and stomped out of the tent, obviously angered by the reprimand. Dieudonne shook his head and studied the map again, trying to put some form of sense to the Thai advance. It was slow and methodical; a harsh critic might even describe it as lethargic. The image that came to his mind was that of a slow flood of water, perhaps from a dripping tap. It was quietly seeping past the French defenses, not forcing its way through them. Obviously their commanders are determined to keep their casualties to a minimum but there is more to the situation than just that. They’re just not trying to move quickly. Are they really prepared to cede the initiative to us?
His thoughts were interrupted by a tattoo of rifle fire from his left flank. A breathless runner arrived a few second later. “Sir, Lieutenant Lucrece sends his compliments and says he is under rifle fire from a low ridge some three hundred meters to his front. He seeks permission to return fire.”
Dieudonne looked at his map and marked a red circle on the ridge in question. It really wasn’t much of a ridge. At best it was only some ten meters higher than the position held by Lieutenant Benjamin Lucrece. “Tell the Lieutenant to hold his fire. We will engage the ridge with our mortar.” The company had a mortar squad with a single 60mm barrel. This was the kind of situation the weapon was ideal for. The captain left his tent and went over to where the Sergeant in charge of the mortar squad had set up. A quick inspection of the map and the mortar crew knew exactly where they had to drop their rounds. A few seconds after that and the ridge was marked by the series of small explosions that showed an infantry mortar at work. The Thai rifle fire quickly petered away and the ridge, such as it was, fell quiet.
