A Gathering of Saints

by A Gathering of Saints (retail) (epub)

  The world around them had gone mad, lit by a thousand fires, and everywhere there was the sound of roaring flame and snapping timber. Out of the corner of his eye Black saw a fire engine come to a screeching stop and half a dozen helmeted men ran towards them, dragging unravelling lines of canvas hose. A second truck appeared, then a third.

  ‘Oh, Christ!’ Katherine moaned. She pressed her cheek into Black’s chest, then lifted her face and kissed him hard, pressing her mouth onto his, her breasts crushed against him. For an instant he could taste the cool sweetness of her tongue and then he felt a wrenching hand on his upper arm, whirling him around.

  ‘What the bloody hell do you think you’re up to then!’ Black found himself staring into the face of a helmeted ARP warden, the man’s features twisted into a furious scowl. There was a hiss and roar behind him as the first of the hoses went into operation and a long arc of spray began to play against the burning entrance to the arcade. The warden pushed Black hard.

  ‘Fuck off out of here, mate! I’ve got no time for the likes of you!’

  Still holding on to Katherine, Black staggered away. He took a few steps and then Katherine stumbled, tripping over the twisted remains of one of the arcade skylights.

  ‘Are you all right?’

  She nodded. ‘Yes. Fine.’ She shuddered and gripped his arm. ‘Another few seconds – Jesus!’ She stared up at him, her eyes wide, the excitement gone, replaced by shock and fear. ‘You saved my life.’

  ‘I’ll take you home.’

  Twenty silent minutes later they reached the dark entrance to her building in Hertford Street. Behind them, hidden now in the distance, the raid continued. Standing in the doorway, Katherine was nothing but a darker shadow.

  ‘You’re sure you’re all right?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes.’ He could hear her take in a long shuddering breath and then she sighed. ‘Would you like to come in for a drink? I could do with something to calm my nerves.’

  Morris Black remembered the smell of her hair and the quick cool taste of her mouth. For no good reason that he could think of, he felt ashamed.

  ‘All right,’ he said. Which didn’t make much sense, either. Katherine turned her key in the lock and Black followed her up the dark stairway to her flat. She ushered Black into the front sitting room, pulled the blackout curtains across the windows and switched on the lights. The room had been furnished with flea-market economy and lacked any kind of real personality. A desk was in front of the windows, piled high with news clippings and neatly stacked file folders. Katherine showed Black to a large, overstuffed chair on the far side of the room then went to a small, cream-coloured cabinet that stood close to the kitchen door. She opened the cabinet and took out two bottles.

  ‘I can give you Scotch or Scotch,’ she said, turning to face him, smiling, a bottle in each hand.

  ‘I think I’ll have the Scotch.’

  ‘Ice?’

  Black smiled. ‘No thank you.’ Cold beer, and ice in their spirits. Americans did strange things to their drink.

  ‘Good, because I don’t have any.’ She poured two glasses of neat alcohol, gave one to Black, then settled down in another upholstered chair across from him, tucking her legs up underneath her and pulling down her skirt. Black sipped at his drink, then put it down on a small table beside him.

  ‘Rather a coincidence don’t you think?’ he said after a moment.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Meeting up like that in the White Horse.’

  Katherine shrugged. ‘Not really. I go there quite a lot. It’s close.’

  ‘But you asked me about the food. You didn’t sound very familiar with the menu.’

  ‘I meet people in the bar. I don’t eat there.’ The woman frowned. ‘Why do I have the feeling I’m being interrogated?’

  Black smiled. ‘Professional habit. Sorry.’ And he was sorry, which was the extraordinary thing. Here he was, sitting with a woman he found extremely attractive and he was doing his best to ruin the encounter.

  ‘I suppose you think I lay in wait and followed you to the restaurant.’

  ‘It crossed my mind.’

  Katherine shook her head. ‘Are you always that suspicious of people you meet?’

  ‘Usually.’ Black shrugged. ‘I generally meet people who are involved in criminal activities of one kind or another. That sort tends to lie a great deal, even when there’s no need to.’

  ‘You think I’m “that sort”?’

  He smiled. ‘You’re a journalist.’

  ‘And therefore not one to be trusted?’

  Black shrugged. ‘A basic tenet of the policeman’s creed.’

  ‘You must spend a lot of time being depressed.’

  ‘I’m a Jew, Miss Copeland. Jews are supposed to be depressed. People expect it.’

  ‘And I suppose that’s meant to be funny?’

  Black shrugged again. ‘Jews are supposed to be funny as well. People expect that too.’ My God, he thought, where did that come from? He almost never made reference to his religion and certainly not twice in thirty seconds. Was he really that nervous being alone with an attractive woman?

  Katherine swallowed the remainder of her drink. She stood up, went back to the liquor cabinet and poured herself another. She sat down again and looked at Black.

  ‘I think you’re full of it, Mr Policeman. I think you enjoy being depressed. You wear it like a uniform.’

  Black burst out laughing, surprised at how much he was enjoying their verbal fencing. ‘You sound more like an alienist than a newspaperwoman.’

  ‘Alienist?’

  ‘Psychiatrist.’

  ‘You sound as though you need one, Inspector.’ She took a long swallow of her drink. ‘All angst and anguish, worrying about being pursued by devious American reporters hell-bent on seducing you.’ Katherine laughed. ‘You probably think I arranged for that bomb to go off in the arcade, or whatever you called it.’

  ‘Are you really hell-bent on seducing me?’

  The young woman shook her head. ‘Not at the moment but I do like you.’ She smiled. ‘Or is that grounds for suspicion?’

  ‘No.’ Silence stood impatiently between them. In the distance he could hear the muffled explosions as the raid continued. ‘I should be getting on,’ he said finally. ‘It’s late.’ He stood up and Katherine walked him to the door of the flat. He was about to step out into the hallway when she put a hand on his arm. He turned and suddenly she leaned forward, tilted her head to one side and kissed him softly on the cheek.

  ‘I really do like you,’ she said quietly and then she closed the door. Katherine stood there for a moment, then turned and walked back into the sitting room. She switched off the lights and went to the window, pulling the blackout curtain back a few inches. A moment later she saw Black’s shadowy figure as he stepped out of the front entrance of her building and turned down the street, heading for his own flat.

  ‘God damn you, Larry Bingham!’ she whispered. ‘And you too, Morris Black!’ She let the curtain fall back into place and turned away.

  Below her, on the pavement, Black walked slowly towards Market Street. He was halfway home before something Katherine Copeland had said made him stop and look back the way he’d come. They’d met twice, once on the train to Cambridge and then again a few hours ago at the White Horse. On both occasions he’d introduced himself simply as Morris Black, identifying himself as a policeman and nothing more.

  But a few moments ago, upstairs in her flat, Katherine Copeland had called him ‘inspector.’ He stood there for a long moment, tracing his memory back along their conversations, almost positive that he’d never mentioned his rank at Scotland Yard. But she’d known. How? And even more importantly, why had she been interested enough to find out?

  Chapter Thirteen

  Friday, September 20, 1940

  9:00 a.m., British Summer Time

  10:00 a.m., Central European Summer Time

  Liddell picked up Morris Black at the offices on Kensi
ngton Park Gardens just after nine and headed south towards the Thames Embankment. As they moved down Gloucester Road, Liddell reached into the pocket of his tweed jacket and pulled out a folded sheet of photostat paper. He handed it to Black.

  ‘Malmstrom, the Swede, hid this in one of the other WCs at the zoo.’

  ‘The Americans picked it up?’ Black glanced at the copy; it was a solid block of numbers.

  ‘The second watcher found it.’

  ‘The Americans just handed it over to you?’

  ‘It wasn’t quite that simple.’ Liddell smiled. ‘Bit of a farce, really. We were watching Malmstrom ourselves – another matter entirely – and stumbled on the Americans. In return for us covering up the matter of their agent having the bad taste to get himself killed in the loo, they agreed to “share” information with us.’

  Black looked up from his examination of the sheet of paper. ‘You think this might have some connection to Queer Jack?’

  ‘I think it might have some connection to The Doctor, which is almost as good. I’ve sent another copy of the message to the people at Bletchley but so far they haven’t managed anything. We need the key to break the code. It’s early days yet but I thought we should inform Knight anyway.’

  ‘Maxwell Knight?’

  Liddell nodded. ‘Yes. That’s who we’re going to see now.’

  ‘I saw his name on your Magic Circle list.’ True to his word, within hours of their meeting, Desmond Morton had provided them with a list of everyone who had officially been informed about Ultra.

  ‘That’s right,’ said the intelligence officer, nodding again. ‘Specialises in the Communist Party and fifth-column work. Odd fellow. Bit of a loner. Sometimes disappears for days on end and then pops up without a by your leave but he might be able to throw some fight on who Malmstrom was going to meet. As you said, he is on the list so you’d have to talk to him eventually.’

  ‘All right.’

  Maxwell Knight kept his office on Dolphin Square, a massive block of more than a thousand flats in dull red brick spread across eight acres overlooking Grosvenor Road and the Thames. The complex, built only a few years before the war, was the largest of its kind in Europe and completely self-contained with a cavernous underground parking garage, a dozen shops and several restaurants.

  To Black, Dolphin Square, surrounded by Pimlico’s time-weary terraces and rooming-house mansions, was like a dreary, monolithic evocation from H. G. Wells’s The Shape of Things to Come. For Maxwell Knight, éminence grise of B5(b), it had the obvious advantage of total anonymity.

  The flat, when they finally found it, had the name Coplestone below the bell push. ‘His wife, Lois,’ explained Liddell, poking the button. ‘Such as she is.’

  ‘Such as she is?’

  ‘Separated. Never had much luck with women from what I hear. His first wife committed suicide.’

  The door opened and Black found himself staring into the brutally burn-scarred face of a man wearing trousers with braces and a white shirt with the sleeves rolled up. A neat, bright red bow tie bound his collar. It looked as though someone had taken a blowtorch to his face. The eyebrows were gone, the nose was no more than a shiny stub and the lips were non-existent. The raw skin was tautly drawn over his jaw and cheeks like pink patchwork sheets of parchment.

  ‘Captain Liddell,’ the man said, standing to one side. ‘Hello Baines. His lordship anywhere about?’

  ‘In the back.’ From the gravel whisper of Baines’s voice it was apparent that whatever flames had eaten away his face had also damaged his vocal cords.

  ‘School chum of Knight’s,’ Liddell said softly as they walked down a short hall to the flat’s sitting room. ‘Got that lot flying Spits in France.’

  The curtains were drawn over the large front windows and an attractive blonde woman was busily typing at a desk in one corner, her work lit by a tall gooseneck lamp. There were several other desks in the gloomy room, a row of filing cabinets and a large chalkboard on an easel.

  A small, clean-shaven man with a large nose and a wide mouth appeared in a doorway leading off to one side. He was wearing an Army officer’s uniform, complete with a row of service ribbons. He was also wearing leather bedroom slippers, expensive ones from what Black could tell. The man smiled thinly, seeing Liddell.

  ‘Hello Guy. Come to set the cat among the pigeons?’ A pair of very pale blue eyes surveyed Black for a moment, then looked back at Liddell. The detective was surprised; he’d expected Knight to be cut from the same Eton–Cambridge cloth as Liddell but his voice was flat and provincial with a crisp military overtone. An Army brat, raised on some desolate post in a godforsaken colony?

  ‘No cats and no pigeons, Max, we’re here about Malmstrom. This is Detective Inspector Morris Black. He’s been seconded to us for the time being.’

  ‘Malmstrom.’ Knight nodded. ‘Our literary Swede.’ He flashed his brief smile again. ‘Come into my office.’

  He ushered them into what had probably been intended as a bedroom but was now fitted out with desk, chairs and more filing cabinets. Knight sat down behind the desk while Black and Liddell seated themselves opposite.

  ‘Why literary?’ asked Liddell. ‘Have you come up with something new?’

  ‘We’ve just had the preliminary autopsy report from Purchase at the Coroner’s Office. Malmstrom was killed with a fountain pen.’

  ‘Good Lord!’ said Liddell, startled. He laughed. ‘I suppose this means the pen really is mightier than the sword.’ Knight frowned at the terrible joke.

  ‘How did they find that out?’ asked Black, ignoring Liddell’s comment.

  ‘It wasn’t difficult,’ Knight responded dryly. ‘The nib snapped off in his brain. Might be useful.’

  ‘Why?’ asked Liddell.

  ‘The nib was Italian. Gold. Rover brand. Rover apparently stands for Rodolfo Verlicchi, a firm in Bologna. Not many pens here use the brand. We may be able to trace it.’

  ‘Not much to go on,’ said Black.

  Knight lifted a bushy eyebrow. ‘There never is, Inspector.’

  For no real reason, Black found that he’d taken an instant dislike to the uniformed man. It was nothing specific, just a sense that Knight looked down on everyone around him. He couldn’t imagine that the man had very many friends.

  ‘Anything else?’ Liddell asked hopefully.

  Knight shrugged. ‘Nothing beyond the obvious. According to the Americans, they were following Malmstrom because he’d once worked as a pilot for Axel Wenner- Gren.’

  ‘Oh, dear,’ said Liddell. ‘Not him again.’

  ‘I’m afraid so.’

  ‘I don’t recognise the name,’ said Black.

  Knight’s supercilious eyebrow lifted again. ‘No reason why you should, Inspector. Not the sort of pond I’d expect to find someone like you swimming about in.’

  Black resisted the urge to ask the man what he meant by ‘someone like you’ and lit a cigarette instead, perfectly aware that there wasn’t any ashtray in sight.

  ‘Wenner-Gren owns a huge company called Electrolux,’ Liddell explained. ‘Invented the vacuum cleaner or some such.’

  ‘He also owns a large interest in Bofors, the Swedish armament company,’ said Knight. ‘And he takes care of the Krupp interests in Sweden as well. Trades with both the Americans and the Germans.’ The short man frowned. ‘He’s a Nazi.’ There was a small glass dish on the desk, filled with drawing pins. Knight emptied it into a desk drawer and slid the dish across to Black.

  ‘Is that the extent of your interest in him?’ asked Black, tipping his ash into the dish.

  ‘Of course not.’

  ‘He’s close friends with another man named Charles Bedeaux,’ put in Liddell. ‘A naturalised American. Bedeaux has interests in several banks including Banque Worm in Geneva; half of its board of directors are members of the Nazi Party.’

  ‘I still don’t quite see…’

  ‘Bedeaux is also a friend of His Royal Highness the Duke of Windsor,’
explained Knight. ‘He was partially responsible for arranging the Duke’s visit to Germany in 1937. He and the Simpson woman were married at his château in France.’

  ‘We’ve had a watching brief on the Duke and his associates since well before the war,’ Liddell continued. ‘Bedeaux gives us Wenner-Gren, Wenner-Gren gives us Malmstrom. By all appearances it would seem that the Americans simply wound up in the net we’d cast.’

  ‘It doesn’t explain the minders.’

  ‘Malmstrom didn’t go to the zoo to see the animals,’ said Knight. ‘He was going to meet someone; the message is proof enough of that. Perhaps the person he was going to meet saw that Malmstrom was being watched and killed him.’

  ‘What about the American? Why was he killed?’

  ‘Bad luck,’ Knight answered. ‘According to the remaining American, he went into the lavatory at the aquarium entrance to see if Malmstrom had left anything there, which he had – the message packet. Meanwhile the second man followed Malmstrom to the WC near the tunnel. Whoever the Swede was meeting was probably waiting for him there. When Malmstrom didn’t come out, the American went in… and died.’

  ‘Why do you make the assumption that the man who killed Malmstrom was a Nazi agent?’ asked Black.

  ‘Because Malmstrom didn’t just work for Wenner-Gren or even Charles Bedeaux. He had another employer as well.’ Knight put on a pair of spectacles, opened a folder on his desk and extracted a grainy photograph. In it two men were seated at an outdoor cafe in bright sunlight. From the looks of it, the picture had been taken with a telephoto lens from a car parked on the far side of the street.

  ‘The blond man seated on the left is Malmstrom,’ Knight continued. ‘The darker-haired fellow opposite is a man named Ernest Filbert.’

  ‘Like the nut,’ said Black innocently.

  ‘Quite,’ said Knight coldly. ‘That photograph was taken in June of this year.’ He handed Black a second picture. This one was much clearer. It showed Filbert and a second, taller companion exiting a car in front of an imposing stone building. A huge swastika flag hung over the entrance. Both men were in black SS uniform. ‘The man with Filbert is Walter Schellenberg. Filbert is Schellenberg’s assistant and Schellenberg is second-in-command to Gruppenfiihrer Reinhard Heydrich, chief of the SD, the Nazi Party Intelligence Service. The photograph was taken in Lisbon, late July.’