A Gathering of Saints

by A Gathering of Saints (retail) (epub)

  ‘Special Branch?’ he asked as they turned in towards the mansion.

  ‘The Lithuanian consul thinks it’s for his benefit. Good luck to him!’

  Liddell pressed the buzzer by the front door of the large house and let himself in. A heavyset man in a dark, ill-fitting suit sat close to the entrance, leafing through a copy of Picture Post. He glanced up at Liddell and Black as they entered, nodded briefly then went back to his reading.

  Black followed his companion along a wide, carpeted corridor to the rear of the house. Closed doors stood to the left and a broad staircase ran up the right-hand wall. Between the stairs and what might once have been the solarium of the house, a private lift had been installed. They entered the small cage and Liddell swung the handle to the fourth-floor notch. The lift began to climb slowly upward.

  ‘What goes on here?’ Black asked.

  ‘Very little at the moment,’ Liddell murmured. ‘It’s destined to be an interrogation centre for captured airmen.’

  The lift slid to a stop at the fourth floor and the two men climbed out. More closed doors and a narrow, plain staircase leading upward. Liddell led the way to the fifth, and top, floor of the mansion.

  It was little more than a garret and had obviously performed the function of rubbish heap for the rest of the house. Stacks of boxes were scattered over the plain wood floors and the three small rooms facing the skylit landing were choked with rolls of carpet, tangled chairs, trunks and other detritus from the previous owner. Liddell took Black into the largest of the three rooms. The wallpaper motif was a repeating pastoral scene done in various shades of pale blue and paler green. The small, soot-spattered window faced a blank-walled central airshaft.

  ‘I’m to conduct my investigation from here?’ Black asked, appalled. He’d do better working out of the coal bin at Central. Being a pawn was one thing, being glued to one’s spot on the board was another. He felt his temper rising again.

  ‘We’ll have it cleaned up in a day or so. Telephones installed, desks, chairs, that sort of thing. There’s even a FANY type named Bronwyn who brings around tea and biscuits from time to time. Marvellous girl.’

  ‘Marvellous,’ Black repeated dully. It was going from bad to worse. He suddenly found himself thinking about the pretty young American woman he’d met on the train to Cambridge, envying her the freedom she was enjoying. He forced himself back to the job at hand.

  ‘You’ll need an assistant,’ Liddell said. Oh, God, thought Black. Not Bronwyn the First Aid Nursing Yeoman, spare me that.

  ‘You have someone in mind, I presume.’ Someone to watch the watcher? A spy among spies? He saw his investigation of Queer Jack spinning off into a bleak, impenetrable blackness of bureaucratic ink.

  ‘Not really.’ Liddell shrugged. Black sneezed. There was an inch of dust on everything. ‘I thought perhaps you might like to have someone of your own about. A familiar face.’

  Black thought about it for a moment, his spirits lifting slightly at the thought of employing an ally. Dick Capstick was the obvious choice but the bearlike man would go mad in a place like this. He was also wrong for the job when you got right down to it and he’d have a hard time keeping his mouth shut. No. Black needed someone without a lot of baggage. A plodder, but one with an imagination, and one who’d follow orders.

  ‘I think I’d like to bring in a recruit from Hendon, a clean slate,’ he said after a moment. ‘Any restrictions?’

  ‘None whatsoever,’ Liddell said expansively. ‘Just so long as he signs the Act.’ He smiled. ‘The world, for what’s it’s worth, Inspector Black, is your oyster.’

  ‘Thanks.’ There was a long pause. Looking out through the grimy window, Black watched as a fragment of newspaper soared up the airshaft, whirling around like the pale, bodiless wing of a bird.

  ‘Do you think you can really do it?’ Liddell said quietly. He looked at the detective strangely, like a butcher bird choosing which thorn to impale its victim upon.

  ‘Run down Queer Jack?’

  ‘Umm.’

  ‘Is that a serious question?’ asked Morris Black, unable to stop himself from risking the question. ‘Or are you just following the form for this sort of thing?’

  ‘What sort of thing?’

  ‘I may be new to this, Liddell, but I’m not a complete fool. You and your people aren’t the slightest bit interested in bringing a murderer to book, you’re all too bloody interested in each other’s job.’

  ‘Good Lord.’ Liddell smiled. ‘Still waters run deep, it appears.’

  ‘I just want to get on with my job,’ Black answered coldly. ‘And frankly, I don’t see how I’m to go about it closeted in a place like this, presumably because I won’t be treading my great bloody copper’s boots across the wrong toes in Whitehall.’

  ‘Believe me, Inspector, Whitehall can find you at Scotland Yard just as easily as here. Whether you believe it or not, what I said before is true. The chances of you bringing your investigation to a successful conclusion, successful by your terms as well as mine, would be hampered and perhaps prejudiced if that investigation was carried on at the Yard.’ Liddell looked at Black seriously. ‘I can assure you, Inspector Black, that all of this is for your benefit as much as ours.’ The policeman said nothing. The speech sounded like a set piece, as though Liddell had been prepared for Black’s outburst.

  ‘Your assurances are no guarantee I’ll be given a free hand.’

  ‘None of us has a free hand in anything these days, Inspector, you know that as well as I do.’ Liddell paused. ‘And you still haven’t answered my question.’

  ‘About the chances of finding Queer Jack?’

  ‘Yes. Can it be done?’

  Black thought for a moment, then nodded. ‘Yes, I think so.’ It surprised him that he’d never really considered any other possibility. He stared at Liddell. ‘I still have some questions of my own I’d like answered.’

  ‘All in good time.’

  ‘Bloody rot.’

  Liddell patted Black lightly on the shoulder. ‘Welcome to the world of spies and stratagems, Inspector.’

  * * *

  At seven thirty that evening, Katherine Louise Copeland left the offices of the Washington Times Herald on Northumberland Avenue and climbed into the dark blue, chauffeur-driven Lincoln Zephyr waiting for her at the curb. With its headlights hooded, the enormous American saloon was virtually invisible as it slid quietly up to the roundabout at Trafalgar Square and the driver piloted the vehicle cautiously, peering anxiously through the windscreen as the wipers thumped back and forth with monotonous regularity.

  There weren’t many people about on a night like this but since the blackout restrictions had come into effect a little more than a year ago they had caused more fatalities in London than the Luftwaffe. It would be extremely bad publicity if the latest traffic accident was caused by a United States embassy car.

  The driver wheeled the Lincoln around Trafalgar Square, then headed west between the palatial clubs that lined Pall Mall, heading for Green Park, Park Lane, and finally, Upper Grosvenor Street on the western edge of Mayfair. Ten minutes after picking her up, the driver deposited his passenger in front of number 47, a plain-faced 1800s brick mansion, its two lower storeys refaced with stone at the turn of the century. Like several other houses scattered throughout the resolutely upper-class district, it was owned by the United States government, although not part of the embassy proper.

  Katherine Copeland was ushered into the house by a stiff-postured young man wearing plain clothes but sporting a very military haircut. After giving the man her raincoat, she followed him along a wide, richly carpeted hallway to the main drawing room. The large salon, blackout curtains in place over the front windows, was lit with pools of light cast by half a dozen table lamps standing on small tables scattered here and there, the lamps and tables placed as eccentrically as the upholstered chairs, sofas and ottomans.

  The walls were covered with ornately framed paintings, large and small, a
rranged with even less sense than the furniture. Altogether it was an oddly skewed and poorly decorated facsimile of an English drawing room taken from the pages of a glossy magazine.

  An electric fire, its open coil burning a furious cherry red, was hissing angrily in the hearth of a huge, marble-faced fireplace at the far end of the room. Standing in front of it was a tall, hawk-faced man dressed in evening clothes named Lawrence Bingham. Ostensibly he was the new first secretary at the embassy around the corner on Grosvenor Square. In fact he was London operations chief for the embryonic intelligence service that later became the Office of Strategic Services under the overall direction of Gen. William J. ‘Wild Bill’ Donovan. Bingham turned as Katherine Copeland walked into the room.

  ‘Kat.’ His voice was dry as old leaves, sandpaper rough from too many cigarettes.

  ‘Larry.’ He hated being called that, which was precisely why she did it.

  ‘Did you make the contact?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Where? When?’

  ‘Yesterday. On the train to Cambridge.’

  ‘How did it go?’

  Katherine shrugged. ‘Well enough. I kept it pretty soft. He’s not a fool.’

  ‘We don’t have a lot of time.’

  ‘I know that. But I repeat, Larry, your Detective Inspector Black is not a fool. Come on too strong and he’s going to smell something rotten in the state of Denmark. He’s a cop after all.’

  ‘Can you arrange another meeting?’

  ‘It shouldn’t be too hard. I moved into a flat on Shepherd Street just around the corner from him. Lots of newspaper types in the building. Never fear, Larry, I’ve set the stage. We’re bound to run into each other sooner or later.’

  ‘Make it sooner. This could be important.’ Bingham turned towards the electric fire once more, spreading his hands out over the coil.

  ‘I’m aware of that,’ she answered, speaking to his back.

  ‘Christ!’ Bingham muttered, rubbing his hands together, ignoring her comment. ‘Why do they have to make this country so goddamn cold?’

  * * *

  The Number stood with one hand gripping a leather strap in the middle carriage of the Bakerloo tube as it clattered southward towards Piccadilly. His other hand was pushed deep into the pocket of his long waterproof, wrapped around the cold, reassuring cylinder of the Wand.

  He stood, even though the carriage was virtually empty at this time of night, and stared blankly at an advertisement for Barclay’s London lager, his tongue, a secret abacus behind his lips, tapping out the fluttering numbers of the safety lights strung along the tunnel wall as they whisked past the glass panel in the door beside him.

  Out of the corner of his steadily blinking eye he could see the pulse beating in the anterior ulnar artery at his wrist; all part of the Count, telling him that they were within a few seconds of arriving at Piccadilly, despite the slowdowns and stoppages all the way down from Dollis Hill and Hampstead.

  The Number smiled; no matter how deviously the distractions were presented to him, the Count remained. His magic cloak and singing sword against the black, swirling forces bent on his destruction. Tonight he was Prometheus, envoy of fire, and he would let nothing stand in his way.

  The train slowed and jerked, then rumbled into Piccadilly Station. It pulled noisily to a stop and he stepped out onto the platform. It was becoming an eerie, familiar scene, the dim lights revealing a living set piece of despair, the result of some terrible catastrophe or plague.

  The platform was a whispering mass of human bodies, people of both sexes and all ages sprawled on coverlets and rugs, most of them awake, some talking quietly, while others stared mutely at the curved ceiling overhead. The men were in shirtsleeves, their jackets folded for pillows, while the women were fully dressed, the poor quality of their clothing identifying them as East Enders.

  On his left, a young boy was pouring tea from a thermos for his mother, while beside them a man in a bloodstained butcher’s apron was trying to read his newspaper with the aid of an electric torch. Younger children were asleep, clutching favourite toys, their faces hollow and grey in the dismal light.

  The heat was almost overwhelming and the foul stench of human waste filled the torpid air, fusing with the reek of too many bodies pressed too closely together in too small a space. At either end of the platform, high, hessian screens had been erected around lavatory buckets that had begun to overflow hours before, when the hordes had begun to gather, disappearing into the underground like frightened rats going down a hole. Thick sludge was spreading out now from under the screens, stanched by cofferdams of sodden newspaper.

  A girl, no more than ten or eleven, faced by the horrors of the makeshift lavatories, was squatting by the stairs leading back into the tunnel, defecating in the darkness, her eyes clenched tightly shut with embarrassment. There were a dozen coughs and a score of moans. Sneezing, the mutterings of shallow sleep and children’s whimpering cries. It was a sewer.

  Pleased by what he saw, The Number made his way carefully down the yard-wide path between the crush of shelterers to the escalators. Here too there were hunched figures sleeping, the electrically operated stairs switched off for the night.

  He began to climb, counting the steps and the advertisements mounted on the walls, eventually reaching the large, circular expanse of the upper station. Hundreds more had gathered here, too late for the relative safety of the lower platform, tucking themselves around the row of automatic ticket machines and under the empty showcases. A single bomb, a fire, even ordinary panic, and a thousand souls would be gathered up like scythed stalks of winter wheat.

  Counting each lift and fall of his feet, he went around the circle and through the exit, finally climbing the stairs leading to the street. He paused at the top of the steps and pulled up the collar of his thin raincoat against the faint breeze and spattering shower, breathing deeply to rid his nostrils of the ghastly odours drifting up from below.

  Piccadilly Circus had become its own ghost. In the deepening twilight of the huge Wrigley’s, Guinness, Bovril and Schweppes signs were dark exoskeletons bolted to the walls of the London Pavilion and the Criterion. A single omnibus shuddered flatulently around the Circus, windows dark, shuttered headlamps barely visible in the mistlike rain.

  In the centre of the darkened square stood the shrouded statue of Eros, his cast-aluminum bow aimed up Shaftesbury Avenue, the figure covered since last New Year’s Eve by a gigantic canvas drop cloth. He smiled again; another of their lies. He knew that the canvas covered nothing but a rigid wire frame; the statue itself had been taken away for safekeeping months ago. All an illusion.

  He looked upward into the iron sky, rain pebbling the lenses of his spectacles and wetting his smoothly shaven cheeks. His pulse and tongue, tapping fingers and beating heart, told him all that he needed to know of truth. It was almost time. He would spit in the jaws of death as the Twelfth Key was turned and come alive once more. He breathed deeply, feeling the memories swarm around him like gathering flies around a corpse. Such a bright day, so long ago.

  Transported into the past, he knelt again in the dark copse that grew behind the chapel in Stanmer Woods, knelt over the still, small body of the boy, one hand holding the slim, smooth neck, pressing nose and eyes and mouth down into the dying moss and the wet broken leaves of autumn, passing on the terror and the burning pain that had once been his alone.

  They found the child eventually, after searching for days, using all the boys from school and dogs.

  Chapter Ten

  Saturday, September 14, 1940

  9:30 a.m., British Summer Time

  True to his word, Liddell had seen to the cleaning of the fifth-floor offices at 6–7 Kensington Park Gardens almost immediately, and Morris Black spent most of his Saturday morning supervising the placement of a grisly assortment of Department of Works surplus furniture and sorting through the relevant files and dossiers on the Queer Jack killings. He found himself enjoying the various house
cleaning chores; it was a refreshing change from his gloomy office at the Yard and it kept him away from the flat with its constant reminders of the past.

  After leaving Liddell the previous afternoon he’d gone to Central Records at the Yard and spent a frustrating hour sifting through possible recruits from the nearly defunct Police College at Hendon. There weren’t many to choose from; the war had seen to that. In the end only one person on file seemed at all suitable – PC Swift, Simon George, twenty-three years of age and unmarried. Hoping for the best, Black placed a call to Hendon and asked that Police Constable Swift be sent down from the college the following day.

  The recruit appeared shortly before noon, limping up the last flight of stairs, slightly out of breath. He was dressed in civilian clothing as Black had requested, looking like an owlish solicitor’s clerk.

  He was on the short side, probably a fraction of an inch taller than the five-feet-six-inch regulation minimum, prematurely bald with a fringe of light brown hair, a round face and an oddly pointed chin. Large, pale blue eyes were made even larger by the steel-rimmed spectacles perched on his long, narrow nose and he had the plump potbelly of a much older man. As he appeared in the doorway of the office, Black noticed that he walked with a strange jerking limp as though he were dragging the lower end of his right leg after the rest of his body.

  ‘PC Swift?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Take a seat.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  Black had placed his large, heavily varnished desk in the centre of the room with the window at his back. Swift seated himself in the plain chair on the far side of the desk, using both hands to shift his right leg into a comfortable position. When the foot came down, it made a harsh thumping sound. Black glanced down at the open file on his desk. ‘Dunkirk?’