A Gathering of Saints

by A Gathering of Saints (retail) (epub)

  ‘Sir?’

  ‘I’m not absolutely sure but I think Queer Jack has changed his tune, Swift. The only way we’re going to know for certain is by examining her remains.’ Black looked across at his companion. ‘Ready for a bit of Burke and Hare, Constable?’

  ‘Whatever you say, Inspector.’ Swift crashed through the gears again and they continued down the hill. ‘It is a bit of a coincidence about the lieutenant commander and the girl. Knowing each other, that is.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Black thoughtfully. The rain rattled angrily on the canvas roof and the windscreen wiper squeaked and thumped. ‘A bit of a coincidence.’

  * * *

  Katherine Copeland crossed the empty expanse of the foyer in the Savoy Hotel and went through the open doors into the restaurant. When the first heavy raids began the huge dining room had been closed down except for luncheon, and now, in mid-afternoon, it was almost empty. She found Bingham seated at a table overlooking the Embankment.

  ‘Not very cloak-and-dagger, Larry,’ she said, sitting down across from him. ‘Aren’t you afraid of being seen?’

  ‘You’re a society reporter, aren’t you?’ He shrugged. ‘I’m society. You could be grilling me about Winant and the embassy two-step for all anyone would know.’ He paused. ‘Or care, for that matter.’

  ‘I’m glad to see you’re being your normal sour self.’

  A waiter in an ankle-length apron appeared, took Katherine’s drink order and retreated.

  ‘It’s been a while,’ said Bingham.

  ‘I was surprised when you called. I thought you’d forgotten all about me.’

  The waiter delivered Katherine’s Scotch and withdrew again. She took a small sip from the drink, sat back in her chair and lit a cigarette. Bingham hadn’t asked her here to chat.

  ‘So tell me, Larry, why have I been summoned into the presence?’

  ‘You’re being taken off the Morris Black operation.’ Katherine was stunned by the pronouncement. She’d come to the meeting prepared to defend herself but she hadn’t counted on this. ‘Whose idea was that, Larry? Yours or Donovan’s?’

  ‘It was a mutual decision.’

  ‘Based on your recommendation.’

  ‘It’s been weeks, Katherine. You haven’t accomplished very much.’

  ‘You mean I haven’t gone to bed with him,’ she said flatly.

  ‘I mean you haven’t found out what the man is doing about the murders.’ Bingham shook his head wearily. ‘Everybody in the goddamn world is in on this thing except us, Katherine. It’s getting to be an embarrassment.’

  ‘Everybody in the world?’

  Bingham sighed. ‘We’ve just had word from the embassy in Berlin. Our contact on the Tirpitz Ufer says they’re all atwitter. Schellenberg met with someone in Stockholm; we think it was their agent-in-place here. Even Gorsky at the Russian embassy is nosing around. With you involved we were supposed to be closer than anyone. It hasn’t turned out that way.’ He paused. ‘Donovan isn’t pleased. A lot of people are getting nervous.’

  ‘First of all it’s everybody in the world, now it’s a lot of people. Just who are we talking about, Larry? And why are they so nervous?’

  ‘Who it is doesn’t matter. The point is there’ve been some rumours. New ones.’

  ‘About the killings?’

  ‘About Churchill’s ability to survive. Things are coming to a head. Lend-Lease is just the beginning. Churchill wants us in the war. We have to have answers. Now, before an invasion.’

  ‘There isn’t going to be an invasion.’

  ‘Not right this minute. But spring isn’t far off.’ Bingham paused. ‘Black’s investigation is still ongoing. We’ve also had some rumours from that end. They’re more worried than ever about a security breach. So is Donovan.’

  ‘What does that have to do with me?’

  ‘Nothing. Apparently. All your reports have been vague. You’re no closer to him now than you were six weeks ago.’

  ‘I’ve got a lead on that photograph he was so interested in. I’m following up on it.’

  ‘No, you’re not. I told you, Donovan is pulling you off the case.’

  ‘Just like that?’

  ‘Just like that.’

  Katherine stabbed her cigarette out in the ashtray on the table. ‘Christ, you people are amazing.’ She shook her head. ‘I’m supposed to do a bump and grind for the limey policeman and then he tells me everything. Life isn’t like that, Larry.’

  ‘How would you know?’ Bingham responded coldly. ‘You haven’t been trying very hard.’

  ‘Fuck you, Bingham.’

  ‘No.’ The diplomat didn’t seem even mildly shocked at her use of the expletive. ‘Fuck Morris Black.’

  ‘He doesn’t want to. Not me, not anyone else.’

  ‘What’s the matter with him? Does he like boys or something?’

  ‘He’s a human being, Larry. Something you obviously don’t know very much about.’ Katherine paused. ‘He’s a Jew, did you know that, Larry?’

  ‘Of course I knew it. So what?’ He shrugged. ‘The world’s full of them.’

  ‘Not so many as there used to be. Hitler is killing them like a scythe through a wheat field.’

  ‘There’s no proof of that. Just a lot of talk.’

  ‘I think Black is worried that it could happen here. He’s ready to throw in the towel.’ She paused. ‘It wouldn’t surprise me if he quit the Yard and left the country.’

  ‘This doesn’t have anything to do with the killings. Or you.’

  ‘No. It has to do with Morris Black. It has to do with the fact that he’s lonely, because he loved his wife and now she’s dead, and he’s worried about a war that looks like it might swallow him up, and most of all it has to do with the fact that he’s a nice man, Larry. Something else you wouldn’t know anything about.’

  ‘I’m not here to be nice, Katherine. I’m here to do a job. So were you.’

  ‘You’re right.’ She nodded. ‘It was a job I thought I could do. But I can’t. I’m not who I thought I was. I’m not who Donovan thought I was.’

  Bingham stared at her thoughtfully. ‘You’ve fallen for him, haven’t you?’

  ‘He hasn’t fallen for me, that’s more to the point.’

  ‘That wasn’t the question. You let yourself get personally involved, didn’t you?’

  ‘Jealous?’

  ‘Of Black?’

  ‘No, jealous of the fact that he still has a soul.’

  Bingham sighed. ‘There’s no reason to continue with this, Katherine, it’s a moot point. From what you say you don’t want the job and we don’t want you doing it. As of now you are not to have any contact at all with Morris Black nor are you to pursue any matters relating to the killings.’ He paused. ‘Eventually an assignment will be found for you that is less… taxing on your morality. Until then you will continue working at the newspaper.’ He stood up. ‘Goodbye Katherine. I’ll be in touch.’ He turned away and walked across the restaurant. Katherine watched him go. ‘No, you won’t,’ she whispered.

  * * *

  First Lieutenant Gustav Claus, twenty-two years old and Staffelkapitän in the First Wing of 51 Fighter Gruppe based in St-Omer, sat slumped in the back of the rattletrap Austin Commercial lorry, trying without success to be philosophical about his sudden reversal of fortune. He shifted his feet, trying to get into a more comfortable position on the hard wooden bench. His leg shackles dragged depressingly over the floorboards of the truck and he let out a long, heartfelt sigh; this was not the way things were supposed to work out.

  For the last five months he’d been stationed in St-Omer, escorting bombers in their sorties over southern RAF bases, doing convoy duty along the English Channel and enjoying the occasional Frei-Jagd, or ‘free hunt,’ when time and fuel permitted. In the air he was at one with his Emile, a Messerschmitt Bf 109E, and had managed to bag nineteen kills, all Hurricanes and Spitfires. One more and he would have achieved ace status and the coveted Knight’s
Cross. Yesterday it had been his lust for a twentieth kill that proved to be his undoing. Like some wet-behind-the-ears novice he’d spent too much time chasing his quarry and he’d run out of fuel over the Thames Estuary. He’d ditched, inflated his one-man dinghy and an hour later he’d drifted into shore on the tide. A patrol picked him up only minutes after that.

  This morning, after a surprisingly hearty breakfast of tea and piping hot oatmeal at the local constabulary, he’d been shackled then unceremoniously dumped into the rear of the Austin lorry. The drumming of the rain on the lorry roof, the dank cold and the raw itch of his salt-caked skin combined to suit his mood exactly. One day the Ritterkreuz was within his grasp, the next day it was gone, replaced by the ashes of defeat.

  Worse than the chains around his ankles were the shackles of failure that bound him to the ground. He’d lived to fly and now that life was over. As the lorry bounced and rattled along the north road into London, he felt the bitter taste of bile rise in the back of his throat. Gustav Claus, fighter pilot, was no more. He was Claus the POW now.

  The truck reached the eastern edge of the city, found its way onto the North Circular Road, then edged off into the suburbs of Enfield at Palmer’s Green, heading more directly north. Claus didn’t have the slightest idea of where he was and he was so exhausted by his recent ordeal that he barely cared. Even so he slid down the long bench to the rear of the truck and peeked out through a small opening in the canvas flap.

  The lorry turned, then turned again and suddenly both sides of the road were bounded by a low stone wall. Beyond that were dense trees. A forest of some kind or a park. A moment later the vehicle slowed, then jerked to a stop. He could hear the driver talking and then they moved off again but much more slowly. Looking out, Claus saw that they had passed through a high stone gate secured by at least four guards. More trees but the stone wall had been replaced by a high barbed-wire fence. Even through the slanting rain Claus could make out the white porcelain knobs of electric insulators. What kind of prison camp was this?

  They drove on for another half mile, then paused again. More conversation, none of which he was able to decipher. Another fence, also electrified, a wood and barbed-wire gate, more guards, and then they stopped again. The engine died. He had arrived. He slid back down the bench and waited. A few seconds later the canvas flap was thrown back and the RAF noncom who’d accompanied the driver from South Benfleet gestured at him with the barrel of the ugly little automatic weapon he carried.

  ‘Come along then, Fritz. End of the line.’

  The only word Claus understood was the name Fritz. He shrugged his shoulders. ‘Nicht verstehe… I am not—’

  ‘Get out of the fucking lorry, mate.’ The guard jerked his weapon again. This time the meaning was clear. Claus stood up groggily, ducked his head and shuffled down to the rear of the truck. The driver appeared and helped him down. Stepping away from the lorry with the armed guard behind him, Claus saw that he was at one end of a huge stone mansion built around three sides of a square. It was surrounded by a double fence of barbed wire and guards were everywhere, bat-like in sodden dark blue rain capes that scraped over the muddy ground as they patrolled.

  An Army sergeant wearing a beret topped with a bright red pom-pom came up out of a basement side entrance and took a large envelope from the driver. The driver then bent down and unlocked the shackles around the prisoner’s ankles. He stepped back and the sergeant took over. He too was armed, this time with an enormous revolver. He waved it towards Claus.

  Claus moved towards the side entrance, then down a short flight of steps to an open doorway. ‘In you go, mate.’ His keeper grinned. ‘Don’t be shy.’

  The sergeant and his prisoner went down a long corridor, the ceiling a snaking maze of pipes. Claus wrinkled his nose.

  The passageway smelled like the stokehold of a ship: wet coke and warm ash. Another smell was in the air as well. Medicinal. Ether? Surgical spirits?

  It reminded him of his uncle Otto’s office. Uncle Otto the dentist. Claus shivered, suddenly feeling uneasy. What kind of prisoner-of-war camp was it that had no prisoners walking the grounds, even in the rain? Why was he in the basement of this place, and, God help him, what was the meaning of that smell?

  They reached a door and stopped. The sergeant knocked then opened it. Claus found himself stepping into a small, brilliantly lit room, painted a glaring white. A bald man in a white lab coat was sorting through a tray of gleaming surgical instruments. He looked up as Claus and the sergeant came into the room.

  ‘Right Sergeant. Outside please.’

  ‘Yessir.’ The sergeant snapped a salute and withdrew. The bald man stared at Claus.

  ‘Oberleutnant Gustav Claus?’

  ‘Jawohl, Herr Doktor.’ Thank Christ for that, Claus thought, at least he speaks German, even if he does have a horrible accent.

  ‘Strip.’ The doctor made an unbuttoning gesture. ‘Take all your clothes off, verstanden?’

  ‘Jawohl, Herr Doktor!’ Claus eyed the tray of surgical instruments. He’d heard rumours about what went on in the basement of Gestapo headquarters in Berlin and he’d listened to the stories about German airmen being tortured in England. He noticed a large hypodermic syringe on the table beside the tray of instruments. Better perhaps to drown in the Channel than go through this. He began taking off his clothes.

  Half an hour later his physical examination was over. The sergeant took the much relieved pilot along another corridor to the supply room, where he was issued a collarless flannel shirt, long woollen underwear, a pair of thick woollen socks, toilet articles and a gas mask in a cardboard box. He was relieved of his flight boots and his leather jacket. Everything else he was allowed to keep. He was told, once again in terrible German, that as an Oberleutnant with equivalent rank to an RAF flying officer, he was entitled to three pounds pocket money a month, paid in tokens or credits.

  Following the kitting-out, he was taken along more corridors, up several flights of stairs and through four separate iron gates, each one manned with an armed guard. So far he had seen no sign of any other prisoners. At last he reached the third and top floor of the large building. The sergeant fitted a brass key into the lock and stepped aside. Carrying his newly issued clothes, Claus entered the room. The door closed behind him and he heard the clicking sound of the key being turned in the lock.

  The room was large, high ceilinged and gloomy, the only light coming from a narrow, wire-netted window. The four iron beds in the room were each piled with three striped mattress ‘biscuits.’ Two khaki blankets were folded neatly at the end of each bed. There was a table, metal lockers, four grubby chairs and coconut matting laid out on the hardwood floor in strips.

  To one side of the window a man wearing a light brown flight suit exactly like Claus’s was washing socks in a small porcelain sink. He turned and smiled as Claus came into the room.

  ‘Company at last,’ the man said. The German was excellent, with a faint hint of Austria – Vienna or Linz, perhaps. Definitely hochdeutsch. Like Claus, this man had the single bar and propeller of an Oberleutnant on the sleeve of his flight suit. Claus dropped his kit on the nearest bed.

  ‘My name is Claus. Gustav Claus.’

  ‘Jurgen Volk. Pardon me if I don’t shake hands but I really do have to wash out these socks. They got terrible muddy when I crashed.’

  ‘You were shot down?’

  Volk nodded. ‘Yesterday.’ Claus stared at him. Volk seemed to be a little old for a pilot. He was on the short side, dark haired and dark eyed. Good with women from the looks of him. Claus remembered being briefed by a Luftwaffe intelligence officer shortly after arriving in France.

  He and the rest of the men in his Staffel had been warned about ‘cuckoos,’ RAF intelligence officers planted as agents provocateurs in POW camps to gather information. He sat down on the end of the bed. Volk half turned so his back wouldn’t be to the new arrival. He continued to rinse out his socks.

  ‘Where did you fly out
of?’ asked Claus.

  ‘Cherbourg – 9JG53.’

  ‘Totenkopf?’ said Claus mildly.

  Volk shook his head. ‘You know better than that, Claus. Death’s Head doesn’t fly out of Cherbourg. I’m Pik As, the renowned Ace of Spades Geschwader.’

  ‘Your commander?’

  ‘Hauptmann Winterer.’

  ‘The name of the airbase?’

  ‘Marquise. Satisfied?’

  Claus had spent a fortnight in Cherbourg before being transferred to St-Omer. So far Volk had answered correctly. He had one more question.

  ‘Do you like the food at the Beausejour?’ he said quietly. Volk’s smile turned into a broad grin. ‘You should have gone into the Gestapo, Claus, you’re quite good at this.’

  ‘Just answer the question.’

  ‘All right. The answer is no, I don’t like the food at the Beausejour.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Because there isn’t any. The Beausejour Hotel doesn’t have a restaurant. I eat at the Tourville just like everyone else.’ Volk cocked an eyebrow. ‘Can we stop the silly questions now? I can assure you that I’m not a spy.’

  ‘Where were you shot down?’

  ‘Isle of Wight.’

  ‘Bad?’

  ‘Bad enough.’ The man laughed and draped his socks over the edge of the sink. ‘At least I didn’t get wet.’ He motioned with his chin. ‘Your flight suit could use an ironing.’

  ‘Do you have any idea where we are?’

  ‘They call it Trent Park. A place called Cockfosters.’

  ‘It’s not a real camp, is it?’

  ‘I don’t think so,’ said Volk, shaking his head. He sat down on the bed across from Claus and reached into the pocket of his flight suit. He brought out a packet of cigarettes. Player’s. Both men lit up. There was a long silence, broken only by the tapping rain on the window above them. ‘You haven’t asked me any questions,’ said Claus finally.

  ‘Why should I?’