by John Gardner
Getting to the catwalk, Wilders saw Corky Corkendale, terrified of the blazing fire, climb up and throw himself out through the port gun hatch, while Piakesky began to climb on to the starboard hatch and got himself stuck over his machine gun, the lead on his electrically heated suit tangled with the barrel.
Wilders grabbed at the struggling Piakesky and dragged him back into the aircraft, shouting at him to help put out the fire, thrusting an extinguisher into his hands. Then he went forward, over the bulkhead, pulling another extinguisher from its position close to the flight deck. When he got back the flames were just as bad, catching hold, and Piakesky gone, so he started to douse the flames with foam, the heat already starting to melt the metal of the fuselage around the waist gun positions. He sprayed until the fire was well damped down, smoke filling the airplane, gushing out of the waist gun hatches. Dropping the extinguisher, he turned to go forward again, get another extinguisher, make sure the fire was definitely out. Then, glancing back, he thought he saw movement in the smoke looking towards the tail, his eyes and throat full of smoke. He moved back and there was the tail gunner Pete Peliandros, crawling on all fours on the catwalk.
Peliandros had been hit, coughing blood out on to the floor, moaning as he moved slowly. Wilders couldn’t hear him, but knew instinctively that he was making a noise.
Wilders gently helped him towards where the radio room had been, saw that the Greek guy, Pete Peliandros, had been wounded in the back, probably punctured his left lung. He laid him out, rested his head on his own parachute, which he hadn’t yet put on, and gave him a morphine injection, like they’d been taught, ripping the gunner’s electrically heated suit leg, using his knife, then cutting his pants leg and the long underwear to the thigh and injecting him.
When Peliandros seemed to be comfortable, floating off, happy on the drug, feeling no pain, Wilders went forward to tell Captain LeClare, reporting on the considerable damage — using the interphone — and the fact that the waist gunners had used their ’chutes, terrified of the flames.
‘Take them a while to get home then,’ LeClare said, concentrating on keeping the ship level and trying not to lose any more height, down to around 7,000 feet now with one engine out and the prop feathered.
Like the Met people had predicted, the wet front had passed through quickly, and when they crossed the British coast it was bright and sunny, visibility for miles, but they were down to 2,000 feet and still dropping, everyone willing Wild Angel to keep flying. The airframe creaked a lot, juddered occasionally and groaned like a badly hung door. Eventually, down to a little over 1,000 feet, LeClare called everyone on the interphone and told them to hang on to their hats, he was going in to the first airfield he saw. They found one, ten minutes later, Earls Colne west of Colchester, home of the 94th Bombardment Group. Willie Wilders stayed on the catwalk with Peliandros, cradling him, keeping him comfortable, not able to give him more morphine. They fired four or five flares to attract attention and bring them running to old Wild Angel once she was down. If she got down.
LeClare extended the flaps as far as they’d go, but Wild Angel flew like a brick, both the captain and Crawfoot hauling on the control yokes as she dropped, dumping herself solidly on to the grass, rolling and slowing for around seventy yards with the motors cut back to idle. Then with a harsh grunt the starboard wing, weakened at the wing root by the 88 mm ack-ack, folded like a piece of silver paper and they slewed around and came to a smoking, steaming rest, everyone scrambling out as fast as they could, except Wilders, who stayed with Peliandros until the medics climbed in and took him off, Wilders fussing around them.
Sol Schwartz also had to be helped out: he’d hardly moved in the upper gun turret, just sat there paralysed with fear and unable to operate normally. A month later he was sent home, invalided out, flew no more missions.
For his heroism that day, little Lieutenant Wilders from Wallace, Idaho, son of a silver miner, received the Congressional Medal of Honor. Wild Angel was marked for salvage and nothing was ever heard of the gunners, Piakesky and Corky Corkendale: presumed drowned, got out in panic too soon.
That afternoon the guys at East Colne filled them with booze, then sent them back to Taddmarten in a command car, where they went through the post-operation interrogation and sat down to a meal around four thirty in the afternoon, steaks and fried potatoes with ice cream and apple pie to follow, all of them shaken, relieved to be home.
Fifty-odd miles away, in Saxon Hall, Golly Goldfinch was sweating on the top line, on the edge of setting the ball rolling to get out, escape. Do the impossible.
Chapter Eleven
Lavender’s real name was Rosemary Lattimer. Lattimer after the dodgy geezer she’d married in a moment of insanity, Reg Lattimer. Later, Reg was killed in a pub brawl, left Lavender a widow, which didn’t matter much because she was already on the game, a little room off Rupert Street in Soho with Golly Goldfinch as her minder and the nice house she’d bought out in Camford — 14 Dyers Road. She had other names, Daphne Strange, Poppy Turner, Jenny Partridge, Eunice Williams, Miss Whippy — generic name for when she did a spot of the old discipline. Now, on the outskirts of Newmarket, in the four-roomed flat she shared with her friend Nora MacSweeney, people knew her as Midge Morrison. They knew MacSweeney as Queenie — Lavender’s bit of fun, Queenie MacSweeney.
They also knew them both as enthusiastic amateurs, aimed to please blokes and did for a price. The bogies in three counties knew Lavender as Trudy East and she was wanted throughout the British Isles as Rosemary Lattimer, also known as Lavender, just the one name. The rozzers even had a photograph of her, didn’t look like her anymore, used wigs, dyed her hair, wore specs, sometimes limped and dressed differently: ‘Mistress of disguise, me,’ she’d say to Queenie, who cackled with mirth. Queenie had a cackle, couldn’t have tinkled bell-like if you paid her. Exuberant and evil were Queenie’s other names.
Few people in the Newmarket/Cambridge area had any idea that the hearty sporting girl, good fun-loving and pleasurable, who was Midge Morrison really was a devious female villain. In truth she was about as funny as a black widow spider and as sporty as a boa constrictor. She had lived in the flat on the outskirts of Newmarket since late in 1940, established herself there when she had to do a moonlight from London following a tip-off from a bent copper.
Her friend Queenie was also known to the police and, if it was possible, had an even worse reputation and quite a long criminal history including theft, assault and battery, robbery with violence and, though it was never proved, attempted murder. She was no better news than Lavender, mainly because she was an intuitive criminal, the problem being that she had no intuition. Queenie would react without thinking ahead, something that could well be her eventual downfall.
However, it was Queenie who’d discovered the vital element they required to extract Golly from Saxon Hall. Queenie, with her cheeky little face, long legs and tidy dishwater blonde hair, was in the saloon bar of the Fox Inn — often went there with Lavender — early evening, ten past six, listening to an elderly bloke chatting away to the innkeeper, saying just when he and his wife had got settled into their little cottage the wife insisted they go to see her sister in Edinburgh, leaving tomorrow morning and would the innkeeper take a look at the cottage if ever he was passing? Away for at least a week, maybe ten days, and he couldn’t abide the sister. ‘Always making cow’s eyes,’ he said, and had a mouth on her like a fishwife. Personally he saw no reason for that, the use of foul and unpleasant language, this distinguished-looking man, grey hair smooth as silk, called the landlord Bert, knew him.
‘He seems a nice old geezer,’ Queenie said when he’d gone and she was alone with the landlord, Bert.
‘Yeah, nice enough but I haven’t got the time or the petrol to go up and look at his place while he’s away.’
‘Right,’ Queenie said, not showing any interest.
‘He’s only just retired, nice little pension, look after you those colleges.’
&nbs
p; ‘What, Cambridge?’
‘Was head porter in one of them colleges. Cambridge.’
‘They tell me that’s a good job.’
‘Excellent.’ The landlord was polishing the head porter’s glass, dimpled pint glass, with a handle. ‘Your friend not coming in tonight, then?’
‘She’ll be in later, I ’spect.’
‘Started in the college at fifteen, that fellow told me, been there ever since. Like the Army.’
‘So where exactly does he live that’s so difficult?’ Queenie asked in just the right tone, neither sounding inquisitive nor wanting to take advantage.
‘He’s my neighbour, and this pub’s fairly remote.’ The landlord was right there: four, five miles out of Newmarket on the Cambridge road. Lavender and Queenie would travel some distance on the Newmarket-Cambridge bus to have a few drinks out at the Fox Inn. Police didn’t often visit there and most of the clients were farmers, landed gents, hunting folks, farm labourers. In the summer, like now, Lavender and Queenie would take a walk out near the haycocks and have a go in the cool of the evening. Nobody talked because that was a good secret to keep close — pound a go and no questions asked. Good money.
In a couple of weeks or so it would be harvest time and that would be a different story ’cos, as Lavender said, you’d scratch your bum to buggery lying in the stubble with your little drawers off. Cover it with a price rise of fifty per cent. They all knew the price went up to £1.10s when they were ploughing the field and scattering.
‘Your neighbour, then.’ Queenie sounded surprised.
‘You go a mile on towards Cambridge and the road forks left, well, a track really, room for one and a half cars only. Snake Rise they call it because it used to lead to Snake Farm that burned down in Coronation Year. Go ’bout five mile up Snake Rise and there’s a pair of cottages on the left, use to be tied cottages for Snake Farm. They been knocked into one and done up, lick of paint, a couple of walls knocked out, chimneys repointed. Called them Snake Cottage, pretty bloody obvious. That’ud be in nineteen and thirty-nine and they were auctioned. Nice but remote. I wouldn’t like to live that far out, but he seems happy enough. Haven’t met the wife though.’ Event met the wife though? In the East Anglian dialect every sentence from the landlord, Bert, sounded like a question.
She wanted to ask if Snake Cottage was on the telephone, but didn’t like to draw attention to her interest. Lavender came in later, around eight, and they sat in the corner, heads together, drinking the sweet sherry they liked.
Lavender had spent the early part of the evening with a Yank officer from 322nd Bombardment Group at Bury St Edmunds, where they were just getting the aerodrome ready. ‘Very generous,’ Lavender said. ‘Brought us a whole ham, I’ll cook it tomorrow. Whole ham and a fiver, coming again next Wednesday. We’d better look at this Snake Cottage.’
This was a few nights ago and they’d caught the late bus back, then gone down to the lock-up garage near Newmarket Station, and got their little Austin Seven they hid down there, dark blue, only took it out when it was imperative. Last year Lavender had run the gauntlet and gone up the Smoke to see some of her contacts, got petrol coupons and some dodgy paper said they worked for a firm supplied waitresses for the Yank aerodromes in their special clubs, helping the American Red Cross and serving at the PX, so they could flash it if a copper stopped them late at night.
Nobody stopped them that night and they drove right past the cottage in the gloaming, saw there was a line going from the telegraph pole to the cottage, so it would do them very nicely, had a telephone. Drove past the next night — when the ex-head porter and his missus were gone — and took a look at the doors and windows, made sure they had locks that would give up when they saw you coming.
Ideal. Got a friend in Bath to post the card to Golly the next day. So now, late in the afternoon of today, Golly was preparing to leave, while Lavender and Queenie were lying low, having broken into Snake Cottage a few hours before they needed and now it was eight forty-five, still light when they made the telephone call, 999, getting the ambulance. ‘It’s my husband,’ Lavender sobbed, ‘I think he’s stopped breathing. Complained of pains in his chest.’ The right story, gave the address and put the phone down quick. She wore a jet-black wig, good one from her friend in theatrical circles, hair brushing her shoulders and a bit of a fringe to almost hide her eyes framed in small round spectacles set in wire.
As they waited, Lavender remarked that she didn’t think the pinky-red carpet quite went with the turquoise curtains or the exposed beams. ‘Too sophisticated,’ she told Queenie. ‘Cottage like this needs more of the chintz country look with plain furniture, not the upholstered chairs and settee.’ Lavender said she’d have decorated in a more simple style.
The ambulance took almost twenty-five minutes to arrive from Newmarket, great square boxy thing, crap brown with a Red Cross on the side and two men in dark-blue battledress in the front. Lavender ran out, weeping and wailing so that the men were immediately intent on quietening her, being gentle and solicitous. Queenie was stationed behind the solid door to the main living room, an old police truncheon in her right hand. The girls wore dark navy-blue slacks and lighter coloured shirts and both were big, not fat you understand, but big boned, with muscular strength in their arms. There was another old truncheon on the table in the little hall, next to the telephone. These two girls were ruthless, had been since they were fifteen.
The taller man, Ted the driver, went on ahead, hurrying with a satchel over his shoulder, anxious to get to the patient. ‘He’s on the floor in the living room,’ Lavender called between sobs, doing her Sarah Bernhardt — could’ve won awards — distracting the other ambulance man, name of Len, short, stubby and smelled of fish, clinging on to his arm and doing real tears, a trick she’d learned early in life.
Ted barrelled into the house, took the right turn through the little archway and the door, half ajar, looking for a body, cannoned into the room and Queenie stepped from behind the door and landed a hearty crack on the back of his noggin. He grunted half way down, like the proverbial poleaxed animal, rolled over and lay still. Queenie thought she had done for him, then saw his chest rising and falling, heard another groan.
In the hall, Lavender, still weeping, getting into the role, allowed Len to precede her through the front door, grabbed the truncheon off the table and cracked him on the bonce, behind the right ear, knew the spot, sending him down and out on the carpet.
They had brought handcuffs, the ones they used for the strange clients who asked to be tied up. ‘Restrain me and I’ll be your slave,’ one had said to Queenie. Turned out he wanted to crawl around on all fours and be pelted with windfall apples.
Lavender rolled Len into the living room and they handcuffed the two men together, then again, looping their arms around the heavy, polished mahogany table legs, wiping down the handcuffs.
‘Sleep well,’ Lavender said quietly and one of them moaned, still out and unhappy.
They had broken into the house by Queenie going through an unlocked kitchen window out the back, unlocking the front door — the key on a hook in the hall. Now they let themselves out of the back door in the kitchen, the Austin Seven outside where they’d left it, out of sight. They’d both put on dark navy-blue battledress blouses, Lavender’s with an oval, red ARP badge on the breast, both with military gas masks over their shoulders and the truncheons slid down inside their slacks.
Lavender drove the ambulance and Queenie had the Austin Seven following, now doing the first dangerous part, getting to within five miles of Saxon Hall to a little lay-by where they could leave the Austin Seven behind a screen of laburnum bushes. Queenie stashed the car and joined Lavender in the cab of the ambulance. From there they drove to a piece of rising ground, away from any A or B main roads, to the high ground looking down on the tree-lined drive, the broken-glass topped wall and the bulk of the wards set aside for the criminally insane at Saxon Hall. At the top of the rise they parked in a thicket sh
ielding them from view, switching off the engine and lights. There they sat waiting for the signal they prayed would eventually come from the squat little building, attached to the wards by a covered walkway, and used as a chapel by the inmates.
***
By lunchtime Golly was really pulling the not-feeling-well stroke, saying, ‘Don’t worry, I’ll be okay.’ Playing the martyr, so they finally thought they’d call his bluff, make him see a doctor, but the only doctors on duty were the trick cyclists, the ones some people called head shrinkers. So they gave him some aspirin and told him to have a lie down. As he went to his cubicle he complained of feeling sore down the right-hand side of his tummy, near the groin.
Eventually he came out again and ate a reasonably hearty meal. Needed the food for later: needed it to throw up.
Early in the evening Dr Cornish came down to check his patients were okay, took Golly’s temperature and pressed his tummy on the right side. Said to Mr Bolt that it could be a grumbling appendix, keep an eye on him: slight temperature but if it went up, or there were other symptoms, he was to telephone Addenbrooks Hospital in Cambridge.
Golly had got his temperature up simply by thinking about it — a good trick. Now he didn’t want any supper and either Mr Bolt or Mr Snow came in to see him every half-hour, kept a bit of bread and cheese for him in case he got peckish. Then, at nine o’clock, Mr Edgehill and Mr Colls came on, night staff. Mr Bolt told them to keep an eye on Golly.
At half past nine, Golly went to the bathrooms, secretly swallowed half the tobacco and the piece of soap. Went back to his cubicle and threw up, started groaning and moaning, saying his side hurt, being unwell, threw up all over Mr Colls, who had to go and get changed while Mr Edgehill rang for the duty officer.
At twelve minutes to ten they telephoned Addenbrooks and spoke to the senior doctor in Emergency. The ambulance left Addenbrooks at five past ten and Mr Edgehill — a deeply religious man? — went off down the walkway to the chapel, said a prayer and drew back the blackout, flashed the signal with his torch to Lavender and Queenie up on the rise. He then went back to the ward and said he’d travel with Golly to the hospital, got the restraints and fitted them round Golly’s wrists and ankles, Golly moaning like the wind in the deep mid-winter, gagging and throwing up, feeling really ill now that the soap and tobacco were doing their worst.
