A Gathering of Saints

by A Gathering of Saints (retail) (epub)

  A happy conclusion, devoutly desired, but so far unachieved. Even with the help of the Government Code and Cipher School experts at Bletchley the answer would take time, if it came at all. Maxwell Knight, who, the detective now concluded, was an arrogant, condescending little prig of the worst sort, seemed content to wait for a miracle. Black knew it wasn’t going to be that easy and was even beginning to consider the possibility that tracking down Queer Jack and finding Liddell’s mysterious Doctor weren’t going to happen at all.

  Blinking and fighting off a yawn, Morris Black realised that he’d been wool-gathering yet again. He also realised that the sound of both Police Constable Swift’s typewriter and his whistling had suddenly stopped. Black stood, joints cracking, and went into the other room.

  Swift was standing in front of the mapboard. On it he’d pinned a large sheet of paper on which he’d laboriously copied out the Malmstrom message, each number a full inch high.

  78124117

  25134349

  66483274

  83496965

  96207461

  93421907

  02993002

  The round-faced policeman turned, hearing Black come into the room. ‘I’ve just been thinking, sir.’

  ‘About that?’ said Black, pointing at the large-scale copy on the wall.

  ‘Yes, sir.’ Swift cleared his throat. ‘I’m not much at this sort of thing, sir. I mean I was never very good at the crosswords or the puzzle page but something did occur to me.’ The policeman hesitated, frowning.

  ‘Go on.’ Black drew up a chair and sat down, relieved at any distraction from the dreadful list.

  ‘Well, sir,’ Swift continued, clearing his throat again, ‘Captain Liddell and yourself both mentioned that this kind of code usually needs a key – the same thing at both ends so you can unscramble it, so to speak.’

  ‘That’s right.’ Black nodded. ‘Liddell calls it a one-time pad, I think. You transpose your message using a random alphabet printed on a pad used by both sender and receiver. Each letter in your message corresponds to a letter on the pad.’

  ‘Yes, but it doesn’t really have to be a pad though, does it, sir? It can be something else?’

  ‘Liddell says he’s seen books used as one-time pads. It would work as long as you both had identical copies. Instead of a random alphabet you code the message using page, paragraph, line and word references.’

  ‘A magazine, sir? Could it be a magazine?’ Swift’s voice was rising with enthusiasm.

  Black shrugged. ‘I suppose so. I’m not sure I see what you’re driving at, Swift.’

  ‘Well, sir, it made me think. The message comes from Germany and gets decoded in England. What could you have in both places? It couldn’t be a German book because that would rouse suspicion and if you wanted to change the code from time to time, which seems likely, you’d have the devil of a time getting copies of the same one in both countries, don’t you think?’

  ‘Reasonable enough.’ Black sat back in his chair, beginning to get a glimmer of his assistant’s train of thought. ‘Carry on.’

  ‘Well, sir, I thought, what sort of thing would it be reasonable to have both here in England and over there in Germany? It couldn’t be a German magazine for the same reason it couldn’t be a German book and it couldn’t be a British magazine because you wouldn’t be able to get one over there.’

  ‘American.’

  ‘Yes, sir, that’s the conclusion I came to.’

  ‘There must be hundreds of magazines published every month in the United States. It hardly narrows things down.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’ Swift nodded. ‘But there aren’t many magazines you can get easily in both places – England and Germany that is.’

  ‘I suppose that’s true.’

  ‘I’ve come up with five possibilities,’ said Swift. ‘Newsweek magazine – that comes out every week – Time and Life, also weeklies, and Fortune magazine and the National Geographic, which are monthlies. I checked with Smith’s, sir. They get them all regularly except for the National Geographic. You can only get it by subscription.’

  ‘Interesting.’

  ‘Yes, sir, that’s what I thought.’ Swift nodded eagerly. ‘If you used one of the weeklies, you could change the code any time you wanted. The message is divided up into eight-number lines but I don’t think that means very much. The first number could be for the page, the second for the paragraph, the third for the line in that paragraph and the fourth number could represent the right word on that line. There’s fifty-six numbers in the whole message, four numbers for each word, fourteen words in all.’ The policeman beamed triumphantly.

  ‘I don’t think it would be one of the weekly magazines. Overseas mail isn’t what it once was. One of the monthlies might be a possibility, though.’ Black thought for a moment. ‘And your number count would only work if just the first nine pages were used, anything more and you get into double digits.’

  ‘I hadn’t thought of that.’ Swift’s face had fallen along with his theory.

  ‘Good try, Swift,’ said Black, standing up. He patted his crestfallen assistant on the shoulder. ‘Keep at it. You may be on the right track.’ He smiled. ‘Maybe we can show the boffins up for once.’

  ‘Yes, sir. Thank you.’ Black took a last look at the message on the wall and went back to his office. A few moments later Swift’s whistling began again; this time it was Elgar’s Pomp and Circumstance. Black groaned quietly and went back to the list.

  * * *

  After two weeks of nightly raids, Air Raid Precaution Warden Leslie Blythe had begun to consider himself something of an expert on the strategy and tactics of the Luftwaffe and a well-informed critic of the local anti-aircraft batteries in his particular patch, which happened to be the hem of Belgravia’s skirt from the police station on Gerald Row, up and over the coal-smutty bridge that crossed the dozen or so lines running into the massive iron caverns of Victoria Station, round about the maze of little streets feeding into Grosvenor Place and the Vauxhall Bridge Road, then back down Ebury Street and home again to a nice spot of tea in the cafe of the big new coach terminal on Buckingham Palace Road.

  A liberal education it was, prowling about that part of the city, night after night. Prossies offering knee-tremblers and God knows what else to soldiers on leave under the arches of Elizabeth Bridge, doe-eyed queers skulking about in the trees around the statue of Marshal Foch in the little park across the road from the station, the occasional Rolls or Bentley streaming up to the palace, only a skip away beyond Lower Grosvenor Place. You had it all here, rich and poor, young and old, some coming, others going, even in the middle of a raid.

  It was exciting, especially when you spent the daylight hours punching tickets on a bus as he did, or looning about on a bicycle with a sign round your neck saying ‘Take Cover’ like his pal Police Constable Mickelthwaite. The blackout and the nightly raids brought out the best in people, just as they said on the wireless and in the papers, but it bloody well brought out the worst as well – he could attest to that easily enough.

  His particular favourites were the groups of roving ‘shelter crawlers,’ roving bands of lathered-up toffs from the West End clubs with nothing better to do than go from shelter to shelter, drunk as lords, which some of them no doubt were or would be, seeing what life below ground had to offer and making a general nuisance of themselves. He’d had a few of them on report over the last fortnight and no doubt there’d be more in the future.

  If he were running things by God, they’d all be branded for the white-feather conchies they really were and packed off to an internment camp with all the other ragtag Jews and gypsies Hitler had managed to sweep out of Europe.

  For the last few nights Leslie Blythe had noticed a distinct weakening of intensity by the Luftwaffe and he wondered if Goering’s flyboys weren’t coming to the end of their rope.

  The afternoon raid had been light, and even though the sky overhead was clear tonight there seemed to be fewer bombers. It
was fully dark now and the alert had been on since dusk but it had been close to ten o’clock before he’d heard the first, distant droning of the Heinkels and Dorniers, and when they did come it seemed to Blythe that they were spread thinly and flying at much higher altitudes than before. The big searchlight batteries in Belgrave Square, a dozen blocks to the north, didn’t seem to be picking up anything either and the ack-ack boys massed in Hyde Park were firing at shadows, the ratcheting cough of the big guns audible for miles around, the pink and yellow blossoms of the exploding shells turning the night sky into a gigantic fireworks display easily visible even at this distance.

  Making his rounds the last hour or so, he’d also noticed that the bombers seemed to be flying in widening, searching circles rather than making a straight-on approach to specific targets. Fewer bombers, fewer bombs; there was no doubt about it: Fat Hermann was losing steam. Which was just fine as far as Leslie Blythe was concerned; he liked the extra money he received for his ARP duties but he wouldn’t mind getting a leg over with the Mrs, once in a while, not to mention a decent night’s sleep.

  Listening to the crumpled thump of the bombs ripping up the East End and the harsher moan of the sirens around Victoria Station, Blythe poked about among the trees in the triangular park around Grosvenor Gardens, then turned west onto Lower Belgrave Street. He checked his watch with the hooded light of his ARP-issue torch. Almost midnight. He went on, then paused again at the corner of Ebury Street to check the empty yard of the dark brick council school.

  Hearing footsteps, he turned and watched as the uniformed figure of a woman crossed to his corner. A Wren, in her early twenties from the look of it, her cardboard gas mask hanging from its shoulder strap along with a plain black leather handbag. He put up a hand to stop her, more for the sake of having someone to talk to than any worry that she was up to no good.

  ‘Identity card, please, miss,’ he said. A looker, this one, he thought as the woman sighed and began rummaging around in her handbag. Short, dark hair peeking out from under her cap and a pixie face with a sprinkle of freckles across a nicely turned little nose. Not much in the chest but good legs and a nice turn of ankle despite the heavy, square-heeled uniform shoes. Probably wearing those awful woollen knickers under her dark blue skirt.

  She handed him her National Registration Card and he shone the torch on it briefly. Jane Julia Luffington, a Wren with Motor Transport. According to the card, she lived at 18 Palace Gate in Bayswater.

  ‘Long way from home then, aren’t we?’

  She shrugged. ‘I was on my way to the underground.’

  ‘Visiting the boyfriend?’ Blythe grinned.

  ‘I don’t see that it’s any of your business,’ she answered coldly. She took back the NR card and stuffed it back into her handbag. ‘Anything else, Warden?’

  ‘Not a thing.’ He shone the torch into her face just long enough to make her eyes squeeze shut. Then he snapped it off. ‘Best be on your way then, miss.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  Blythe watched her go, admiring her walk for a moment. A long way from Edith, his wife of these last, long eighteen years. Even at twenty-two Edith hadn’t walked like that. If he was ten years younger he might have jotted down her address, just in case, but as it was, he simply sighed and turned away, continuing his patrol. Edith would have to do.

  Had he kept his eyes on her, he might have seen Jane Luffington pause beside a dull grey Austin van parked at the curb less than fifty yards up the street. He might have seen her nod, then climb into the van and he might have noticed the Government Post Office markings on the side panels of the vehicle. If he’d been suspicious enough he might even have attempted to jot down the licence plate number. But his back was turned and he did none of these things.

  Twenty minutes later he was drinking a mug of hot, sweet tea with his friend PC Arnold Mickelthwaite. He mentioned his encounter and described the woman but by morning he’d forgotten her completely.

  At 7:15 a.m. the naked corpse of Jane Luffington was discovered halfway across the city in the middle of a bomb site in Broad Street, not far from the East End’s Liverpool Street Station. Her hands and face had been badly burned in the blast and fire, making identification almost impossible.

  The body was initially taken to a makeshift morgue in the basement of a church on Whitsun Street only a few blocks from where she was found and then, after she remained unclaimed, she was transferred to the Coroner’s Office in St Pancras in the hope that she would eventually be identified.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Monday, November 11, 1940

  11:30 a.m., Greenwich Mean Time

  September came to an end and with its passing the threat of possible invasion diminished. Indian summer was replaced by a grey, wet October and the worsening weather on the English Channel was like a slowly closing door on Hitler’s hopes for a quick and easy victory in England.

  Sea Lion, the Nazi invasion plan, was postponed then postponed again. Finally it was abandoned altogether except as a diversion for Stalin’s benefit and the Luftwaffe, with no four-engined bomber to cut deeply into the heart of the nation, was forced by necessity to concentrate on targets within the range of its available aircraft.

  Most of its efforts were focused on London and through October and the first part of November thousands of individual sorties were mounted and hundreds of tons of bombs were dropped onto the city each night. The Battle of Britain was over, at least for the moment, with no clear victor or vanquished. The Siege of London had begun. By November a large proportion of the city lay in ruins. An average of 170 people were dying during each night’s raid and 200 were seriously wounded. Whole neighbourhoods in the East End had been totally destroyed. Sixty thousand homes had been made unlivable, sixteen thousand had been completely destroyed and each night more than twenty-five thousand Londoners were on the streets, desperately seeking shelter from the nightly, droning horror.

  Looting became a serious problem. The newspapers ran interminable stories about ‘plucky East Enders’ and ran endless photographs of witty slogans and bombed-out shop fronts but they failed to mention the growing numbers of ‘spotters’ on the darkened streets who reported back to their gangs, pinpointing likely properties. People returning to blocks of shops and houses often found that they hadn’t been touched by the Luftwaffe but had been cleaned out by thieves, who’d removed everything, from clothes and food to razor blades and cigarette lighters. A special plain clothes anti-looting squad was established, using radio-equipped cars to track down their quarry.

  Throughout this period there were no reports at all of any deaths that might have been laid at Queer Jack’s door and the murders of Rudelski, Talbot, Eddings and Dranie remained unsolved. Despite the best efforts of all concerned no new clues were forthcoming in the case of the two men murdered in the WC at the London Zoological Gardens.

  On November 5, Franklin Delano Roosevelt was elected by a landslide for an unprecedented third term and within hours there were rumours circulating in London that Ambassador Kennedy was being pressured to resign. The most likely choice for his successor appeared to be John Gilbert Winant, the dreamy Lincoln lookalike and ex-govemor of New Hampshire. On November 9, two years after the fateful Munich Agreement and his famous ‘peace for our time’ speech, Neville Chamberlain died of throat cancer.

  Since the unmarked death of Jane Luffington on the night of September 20, Detective Inspector Morris Black and his assistant, Police Constable Swift, had spent most of their time methodically interviewing the long list of people provided by Guy Liddell and assembling an ever-growing number of dockets that now filled eight file cabinets in the little offices on Kensington Park Gardens.

  Liddell seemed absorbed in other projects and rarely visited Black, contenting himself with the occasional telephone call to check on progress or the lack of it. For the most part, the detective and his assistant were left entirely to themselves and for the last fortnight Black had begun to wonder if he wasn’t becoming some
thing of an embarrassment to the tweedy, pipe-smoking intelligence officer.

  * * *

  Seated behind the wheel, Police Constable Swift drove tight-lipped along the main road towards Canterbury, peering through the inverted fan of clear windscreen created by the single thumping wiper. It had been raining since early morning, grey sheets of it obscuring the rolling hills of Kent and any view of the open sea beyond the widening mouth of the Thames at Sheerness. The water seemed to hang suspended in the air, turning the woods and the fields a brilliant, almost livid green against the dull pewter sky.

  The Alvis that Swift had managed to cadge from the impound yard had long ago been replaced by a wretched little Austin Ruby with barely enough room for the two men to sit side by side and a canvas sunroof that leaked along the doorposts whenever it rained, leaving musty little puddles on the floor matting that filled the interior with the sweet-rot odour of mildew.

  They had been travelling for more than an hour and glancing out through the rain-streaked side window, Morris Black could make out the dark line of the railway cutting on his left and the dim, ghostly shape of the Isle of Sheppey lying a mile or so beyond. They had just driven through the old town of Sittingbourne, forty miles east of London; ahead lay Faversham and the southern secondary road leading to the rising, inland hill country.

  ‘If he’s dead, sir, I wonder why we’re carrying on with all of this.’ Swift frowned and Black smiled, glancing at his assistant. He hadn’t said a word for the past twenty minutes and the question was obviously the result of a long, silent train of thought.