by John Gardner
***
Wild Angel II had taken off from Long Taddmarten aerodrome at a little before ten. Six aircraft — six ships as the American jargon had it — initially heading to a point above Felixstowe, where they climbed to their bombing height of 23,000 feet, orbiting for almost ten minutes, together with two squadrons of Spitfires — including the recently equipped 308th from the 31st Group 8th USAAF — climbing, turning and waiting for the six other B-17s out of Earl’s Colne. The target was the same one they had attacked on the very first operational mission on 17th August, the railroad marshalling yards at Rouen-Sotteville. In all, the Spitfires were orbiting for almost eighteen minutes before the airplanes out of Earl’s Colne got themselves into position and the whole formation could head out down the east coast of the UK, then off across the Channel. As they got into that final formation, one of the American Spitfire pilots broke radio silence: ‘We’re gonna have to leave the big brothers before we reach the target,’ he said, but the pilots of the Fortresses paid no attention, thinking the guy was having a joke at their expense. ‘We were on time,’ Ricky LeClare said over the interphone as though this was all that mattered, we were on time, therefore all was bang-on.
The whole crew of Wild Angel II was excited, their first proper operation since the original crew had been split up by death, injury and the twitch, as in the case of Solly Schwartz, who had frozen over the guns in the upper turret during the St-Nazaire trip. Now, Jim Dodd was in the upper turret, swinging the guns round, always alert, his eyes tracing through the clear cold blue sky, watching for the dots which would grow and were out to get you. Pete Israel and Danny Spooner in the waist positions were also alert, everyone looking for a good scrap.
With Will Truebond in the nose, hunched over the Norden bombsight, and in control of the airplane on their final run, everyone was relaxed, even when Navigator Jimmy Cobalt said, ‘Uh-oh, our little friends’re leaving.’ The Spitfires peeling away, unable to remain with the formation, running out of fuel because of the long wait they’d had over Felixstowe.
Then the flack started, the nasty little smudges of grey-black against the sky and the occasional rocking of the airplane when one came a little too close.
‘Bombs away,’ Truebond spoke calmly, and Wild Angel II lifted, relinquishing the weight of the bomb load, then tipped to one side, the nose slewing, jerking to starboard as they felt another thump, invisible hand grabbing at them, the outer port engine suddenly belching smoke, a flicker of flame deep in there, for a couple of seconds, and there was a swift crackling noise.
‘Feather port outer,’ Ricky said using the interphone, and Bob Crawfoot repeated the instruction as LeClare steadied the ship, working as a team to shut down the damaged engine, pressing the button that fired the extinguisher through the nacelle to quench the fire.
Immediately the ship began to slow and lose a little height. ‘Keep your eyes peeled everybody, we’re going out of formation.’ Ricky was doing what he had practised many times, his voice calm, controlled to dampen any anxiety among the crew.
Then Bob Pentecost in the ball turret yelling, distorted in LeClare’s ears, ‘Two coming in, five o’clock low!’ Followed by the tuck-tuck sound of bullets and cannon shells hitting the metal fuselage.
LeClare looked left and saw an Me 109 turn away, close enough to see the pilot’s head move as he worked the stick, pulling against the force pressing him down against his seat. ‘Yellow noses,’ LeClare said, again calmly, seeing the bright-yellow spinner on a second aircraft so close that he felt the wash of its slipstream. Yellow spinners meant Gruppe II/Jagdgeschwadern 26, the Abbeville boys from Drucat aerodrome outside Abbeville, veterans of the Battle of Britain.
As he was thinking, so Pete Israel in the port waist position shouted, ‘Port, three o’clock high!’ Then louder, ‘Four of the bastards coming in!’
Almost at the same moment, LeClare felt something cross the cabin in front of him as a 22mm cannon shell took off half of Bob Crawfoot’s head, spraying the entire cabin with a film of blood.
Danny Spooner was hit, standing in the starboard waist position, feet slipping on the shell casings from his guns. Danny felt a fist bang into his chest, saw what looked like a film of blood, filling up his eyes, heard his mother calling for him, ‘Danny… Danny… You fighting again, Danny…’
In the tail, working his guns from the standoff position at the bottom of the tall tailplane with the linked sight that operated the guns facing backwards out of the tail, ‘Red’ Moir gave another warning, ‘Two, coming in on the tail, six o’clock high,’ and he saw the flicker from the cannon in the spinner of one of the Me 109s, then the other one, the teeth-shattering blows somewhere just behind him followed by a dizzying lurch downwards as the entire tail section was blown from the ship. ‘Red’ screamed all the way down.
Pete Israel sat among the shell casings laughing. He had felt this terrible burning pain, sat down knowing he had been hit, ripped at his electrically heated suit to render some first aid to himself. Torn the suit open with his knife and saw what had happened, laughed, throwing back his head. He had wet himself in the excitement and shorted out the wiring. The terrible burning pain was electricity from the shorting wires snapping at his leg. He was still laughing when they blew up.
Up in the nose both Truebond and Cobalt lay dead, rolling around the nose cone, imprinting the plexiglas with their blood. In the cabin, covered with Bob Crawfoot’s blood, and some of his own, Ricky LeClare felt the seat under him wallow and tip. He felt detached as he looked out on to the port wing and saw a flicker of fire somewhere between the two engines, the outer one still gushing smoke and, he guessed, some gasoline in there, starting to take hold. Aloud he sang some of the old song from U.Va-
‘From Vinegar Hill to Ivy Road,
We’re gonna get drunk tonight.’
He saw the blood in his head and thought it was a good job he’d written to Mr Livermore otherwise they might never have known what happened, how he’d gone for a walk in the middle of the night, and seen the lights — Hey, that’s real pretty, he thought as the fire struck out of the wing, blossomed and formed a huge roaring fire sliding up to the wing root.
‘Wow, Bob,’ he said to the headless corpse jiggling about next to him. ‘Hey, Bob, look at her go,’ and the flame reached out to consume the entire wing and fuselage of Wild Angel II with a huge whumping sound that leaped up and licked Ricky’s ear, felt it singe him.
‘Son-of-a-bitch!’ he muttered.
Chapter Twenty
They didn’t get back to the Falcon Inn, Long Taddmarten, until almost midnight, stopping off for an execrable meal near Chelmsford — soggy chips, overcooked beans and a grilled steak that Tommy swore had come off the sole of some boot attached to a corpse at Dunkirk.
Molly was waiting up for them and Mrs Staleways came rumbling out. Tommy gave her the ham and she asked him if he would like some sandwiches. ‘Ra-ther,’ two words, Tommy grinned at her and Suzie added, ‘Little mustard, Coleman’s please.’ Cheeky little grin, extracting the urine from Tommy.
‘Right away, right away,’ Hettie Staleways almost bobbed a curtsy and trundled off to do Tommy’s bidding.
‘Think you’re in with a chance there, Chief,’ Molly said, and he glared at her, said, ‘Could’ve done with you today, Moll. Sore pressed we were.’ He led the way to his room, and they sat around the table, Tommy, Molly and Suzie. Brian had sloped off, knew he wasn’t required.
‘She’s back, Chief,’ Molly said, sitting across from him.
‘Who’s back?’
‘The fair Paula and her daughter, Thetis.’
‘How d’you find out?’
‘You asked me to take a peep, so I sent Laura over to keep a weather eye on “River Walk”. She phoned to say they got back around five this afternoon.’ Glancing at her watch, ‘I mean yesterday afternoon.’
‘Alone, just the two of them?’
‘Alone, that’s the good news. The bad news could well be this letter.’
She handed him a cream-coloured envelope addressed to ‘Detective Livermore. In the event of my death’, written in blue ink.
‘It’s from?’
‘Captain Ricky LeClare. Major Bragg brought it over. It was with LeClare’s effects and marked to be given to you in the event… Bragg said he bought it, him and all his crew, got the chop over Rouen this afternoon.’
‘Oh! Oh, I’m sorry.’ Tommy looked just a tiny bit stricken, for several seconds, not long.
As he was tearing the envelope open, Mrs Staleways tapped at the door and brought in a tray with the sandwiches and a pot of coffee.
‘Lord knows where she got the coffee from,’ Tommy said when she had departed, took the letter out of the envelope, longish letter, several pages.
He started to read, eating a sandwich at the same time, got on to the second page and said, ‘No, Molly, this isn’t bad news. It’s quite good actually, not for poor old Ricky of course, but quite good for us. Listen to this.’ He started to read.
Dear Detective Livermore,
I guess I should have bit the bullet and told you all this when we last spoke. I nearly told your nice sergeant when we met, but didn’t have the guts. See I wanted to go on flying, doing operations against the Nazis. Once I came clean over this I was pretty sure they’d take me off flying and operations. I don’t know what they’d charge me with, but I guess it would be something to do with tampering with evidence, so you’ll get this if I’m taken prisoner, or if the bastards get me, which will mean I’m dead.
Okay. First, I know you’re aware of the wire being cut behind the aircrew quarters. Well, the crew of Wild Angel did that. Stupid, foolish and against regs, but we’re all pretty stupid. We did it to save ourselves the trek up to the main gate, and it plays a part in what I got to tell you.
On the night of 16th/17th August 1942, I couldn’t sleep. I guess it was nerves and excitement. See we knew we were going on our first bombing mission in the morning. Didn’t know the target but we did know it was some Nazi base in France. I tossed and turned, just couldn’t sleep, so I thought I’d get up and take a walk round the block. I’d done this before, through the metal fence, across the road and down Knights Close, back on to St Mary’s Drive that takes you to the main road again.
I put on a shirt and trousers, a pair of soft shoes and set off, going through the opening in the metal fence, turning left, crossing the road and heading towards Knights Close.
As soon as I got into Knights Close I could see something was wrong, Knights Cottage — where the Ascolis lived — was a blaze of light. I thought this couldn’t be right, it was like a signal to any bombers that could be overhead, a huge beacon shining in the darkness.
I remember walking fast, then running and I got to the white five-bar gate at the bottom of the little drive in front of the house when the lights suddenly went out. The blackouts weren’t in place I’d realized when I first saw the lights. Now, first the upstairs lights went, then downstairs. I stopped by the white gate and suddenly the front door burst open and somebody came running towards the gate. I stepped aside, almost into those bushes on the left, and the guy pushed the gate open and went haring up Knights Close, toward the main road. I guess I should have followed him then, but the front door was wide open so I ran down and went into the house. Foolishly, I reckon, I switched the hall lights on again and saw the horrible state of the hallway. Max Ascoli was flat on his back with his face shot away and there was a shotgun lying by his feet.
I didn’t know if he’d shot himself or what, and of course I didn’t know anything about Jenny and young Paul. And I didn’t want to know. I only heard when we came back from the operation in the afternoon and I reasoned that probably the man I’d seen running from the house had something to do with his death and I recall thinking that I should follow him. See if I could identify him. To follow him meant that I would be putting myself in some kind of danger, so I grabbed the shotgun. There was blood everywhere, right across the marble floor and around Max’s body. But I grabbed at the gun, got some blood on me doing it as well. I thought about the blood constantly. I kept getting this picture of blood all around me. In my head the blood followed me everywhere. I even thought of it while we were flying, on the raid.
Whoever used the gun had been a cool guy, reloaded it: there were spent red cartridge cases on the floor and new ones in the breeches. I broke it open and looked.
I switched the light off again, took my handkerchief and wiped the switch because I didn’t want to leave fingerprints around. Then I left the house. I remember slamming the door and running like hell up Knights Close, heading for the main road. As I reached it I was aware of a car engine and saw whoever it was just getting into the car, the engine gunning and the car being driven away at speed. I was just left standing there, like a dummy. I can’t tell you what kind of car it was, nor the license plates, but I did get a sense that it was a woman driving and that she had opened a door for the guy to get in. I got a feeling, no way I could prove it, that this had been somehow arranged. That the car had been waiting nearby, had dropped off the guy and was now picking him up.
So, there I was, standing in the middle of the road with a shotgun in my right hand. I went straight over to the fence, walked along to where we had cut it, wiped off the gun with my handkerchief, and dropped it into the ditch beside the fence, climbed through and walked back to my quarters. I saw nobody else. I noticed my watch said exactly four fifty-five. Sorry, I should have told you all this before.
It was signed Richard C. LeClare.
‘Well,’ Tommy sighed, ‘what I’d give to ask Captain LeClare a few questions, his sense of the fleeing guy’s height, how he moved.’
‘Thetis thought she heard the telephone ring between three or four,’ Suzie said.
I had some silly idea it was sometime around three or four. What Thetis had said at the interview in ‘River Walk’.
‘Mmmm,’ Tommy grunted. ‘Yes, that would fit. But why would Paula respond to a call from Pip?’
‘If she’d set it up. If she’d finally gone cold on Max. If Max had refused, one last time, to leave Jenny. Could happen.’ Molly convincing.
‘It’s an idea,’ Tommy frowned. ‘But I’d have to be persuaded. Those letters are so…’ He struggled for the word.
‘Passionate?’ Suzie tried: after all she’d read the letters as well.
‘It’s more than passionate. There’s a kind of profound love, attachment. They split up because of the danger, when Max discovered there was someone nobody else had found, what was his name? Edgar Turnivall?’
‘Edgar Turnivall,’ Molly agreed.
It had to be an incredibly strong bond between them: all that stuff in the letters Max hung on to, and kept in his little safe, right under Jenny’s nose.
‘I suppose we could give her a bit of really hard interrogation tomorrow — Paula. Her and Thetis.’
‘You think she’d have told Thetis? Max’s daughter after all,’ Suzie asked.
‘Wouldn’t have thought so.’ Tommy shook his head violently as though to rid it of some vile thought, like LeClare trying to get the blood out of his head. ‘Sleep on it, eh? I’ll tell you in the morning. Wake me early, Molly dear, for I’m going to use a bit of guile on Paula, I think.’
Molly said goodnight and left while Suzie lingered.
‘What’s bothering you, sweet?’ she asked.
‘A million things, heart. Sometimes I see the whole thing clearly then another puzzle pops up. There are moments when I even think Tait’s right, that this was some passing ruffian. Now, I just wish I could talk to LeClare, what kind of car was it? Old banger? What? Why did you think it was a woman? You see her? Or…? Hell, heart, I just don’t know.’
‘But I thought you were certain it was Pip, the mad, bad and very dangerous brother.’
‘I do,’ Tommy said slowly, raised his head and looked terribly tired. ‘Yes, in my heart of hearts I know it was Pip. Most things fit. Just don’t like the loose ends.’
He smiled ruefully and wrapped her up in his arms, holding her tightly, and she felt she loved him more than anything, then found herself questioning it: had she had enough experience? Tommy for the rest of her natural? For ever’s a very long time, she thought and gently drew away from him.
‘Don’t stay tonight, heart. Might be a bit restless, eh?’
Suzie nodded, kissed him on the chin. ‘Early doors?’
‘Early doors it’ll be, heart, yes.’
*
In the attic at Knights Cottage, Golly still waited. When? he asked himself. When will they come, the lady policeman and the honourable cop? He wondered what was happening to Lavender and Queenie, shivered ’cos he thought he may never see them again, knowing they were locked up. Wondered if Lavender would be able to stand it, being locked up. Good sport Lavender was, but she didn’t like to be in the same room all the time.
He remembered when he was her guard in the little rooms off Rupert Street, up the Smoke. She’d once said, ‘As bad as being in prison, being in this room six days a week, Goll.’ Then she’d laughed. Had a lovely laugh, Lavender had. Real gutsy laugh. He’d see her right once he’d put the lady policeman and the honourable copper away.
Yes, he’d see Lavender and Queenie right.
Just you wait and see. Eh?
*
The morning brought another fine, clear day. It also brought a dispatch rider from Billy Mulligan at the Yard: the report from the team which had been to Marecht Hall, doing over Benny’s drum, as Tommy said. He also said, ‘Bloody interesting. The housekeeper was uneasy, telephoned Mrs Ascoli, Freda, but we know that. We were at Freda’s end. However,’ he said with great emphasis. ‘How-Ever, the guys up there at the house said there were signs that someone had stayed there recently, two beds stripped down, one single and one double. Interesting. Both had been slept in, they reckoned. Housekeeper said she was doing all the beds while Mrs Ascoli — the widow Ascoli — was away feeding the ducks in London. That’s what she said, and she explained herself. “That’s what I always say. When she’s away I say she’s off in London feeding the ducks. That’s because she once told me it was one of the things she liked doing best, going to the park, Regent’s Park, and feeding the ducks and the squirrels. She canna say squirrels by the way. Canna say it properly, gets stuck on the ‘squi’ bit.” What you think of that, eh?’
