Fifth Column

by Mike Hollow

  Celia Berry gave him a polite smile.

  “It’s my first visit, actually. I only arrived a few minutes before you. There was something I wanted to ask Angela about, but it can wait.”

  Angela looked from Jago to Cradock and then back again.

  “Celia and I have met up once or twice since that dance at Hornchurch.”

  “Yes,” said Celia, “I suppose you could say we’ve become pals, haven’t we? I hope I won’t be in the way, Inspector. Would you like me to leave?”

  “No, not at all,” said Jago. “In fact it could be rather convenient that you’re here. But if you can give me a moment alone for a quick word with Miss Willerson I’d be grateful.”

  “Of course,” said Celia. “I’ll wait in the kitchen.”

  Angela took Jago and Cradock into the living room.

  “How can I help you?” she said.

  “I’d like you to come with me and meet someone,” said Jago. “It’s not far from here in the car, and the meeting shouldn’t take more than half an hour, so I’ll get you back here in good time before the blackout.”

  “Of course. If it’ll help you. But hang on – it won’t be dangerous, will it?”

  “No. Detective Constable Cradock and I will be with you at all times.”

  Cradock was listening carefully, wondering where his boss was heading in this mysterious visit.

  “There’s just one other point,” Jago continued. “Since Mrs Berry’s here, I wonder if she would come too. Could you bring her in?”

  Angela walked down the hall and called out in the direction of the kitchen.

  “You can come out now, Celia.”

  Jago heard the sound of a chair scraping on linoleum in the kitchen, and a moment later Celia Berry appeared in the doorway.

  “The inspector wants to take me out for half an hour or so,” said Angela, “and he wants to know if you’ll come too.”

  “How exciting,” said Celia. “Of course. I’m sure we’ll be safe with a policeman.” She glanced at Cradock. “A policeman each, in fact, if this young dear is coming too.”

  Cradock looked at Jago with a face that betrayed his bafflement at what was going on.

  “In that case,” said Jago, “if you ladies can get your coats we’ll be off. I should warn you that my car can sometimes be a little draughty, even with the roof up.”

  They went out into the street, and Angela closed the door behind her. Jago ushered the two women into the Riley’s back seats, then took his place at the wheel, with Cradock seated beside him. He pulled away from the kerb and joined the traffic.

  CHAPTER 43

  Jago could feel his heart beating faster as he urged the car on. This final leg of the journey was longer than the one he’d just done, and he was surprised by the anxiety he felt. Perhaps it was the risk of being caught in an air raid, growing greater with every minute. He thought he’d beaten that old ghost, but maybe not. Or perhaps it was tension, even excitement, as he sensed he was closing in.

  There were few vehicles moving on Prince Regent Lane, and he drove almost the whole length of it faster than he should. It was only forty-eight hours since that night’s quarry had eluded his grasp, and he didn’t want to be reminded of it. He was almost at the northern end of the road. He took a turning to the left for a more direct route, the car lurching on its springs as it rounded the corner. Then he saw. He shouted to his passengers to hold on, and slammed on the brakes. They responded with a squeal and the car stopped just in time. A pair of wooden poles had been stretched across the road with a red road lamp positioned in front of them, and in the middle stood a small wooden trestle sign painted with the words “Police Notice. Unexploded Bomb”.

  He reversed the car past the last turning, selecting first gear as he went, and braked to a halt, then pushed the change pedal down and stabbed at the accelerator. The car lunged forward into its new route with an angry snarl that seemed to give voice to the urgency clenching his stomach.

  Cradock steadied himself with a hand on the dashboard. He was still puzzled about Jago’s intentions, where they were going and why he had the two women in the back. He didn’t ask, for fear of saying something that might compromise his boss’s plans. He glanced over his shoulder. It struck him as odd that despite the apparent friendliness of the two women, not a word had passed between them since they’d started the journey. Angela was staring out of the side window, while Celia was facing straight ahead.

  Then he remembered – Angela had said the man in the photo had paid her what she’d called unwanted attentions. Whatever she meant by that, knowing that this man was Celia’s husband, she might be wondering why Celia had come to see her. And as she’d said, she didn’t want to mention his behaviour to Celia because it might embarrass her. Maybe Angela just wanted to avoid having to speak to Celia. But why was Celia keeping silent too, if they were friendly enough for her to visit? He couldn’t think of an answer to that question.

  It was a full twenty minutes before they arrived. Jago pulled up in front of a house, and when Cradock saw it he began at last to get some inkling of what might be in Jago’s mind.

  Jago turned round in his seat towards the two women.

  “Miss Willerson, would you mind coming with me now?”

  “Of course. If you can let me out of this contraption.”

  “And Mrs Berry, would you be so kind as to wait here for a little while?”

  Celia pulled her coat a little closer round her shoulders.

  “By all means, if you insist, but please don’t be long. I don’t want to sit around out here on my own for too long, thank you very much.”

  “I’ll be with you as soon as I can,” said Jago.

  He strode towards the front door, followed by Cradock and Angela, and knocked.

  It was opened by Susan Fletcher.

  CHAPTER 44

  The house was silent as they entered. Jago asked Susan if her husband was at home and she said yes, they had just eaten and were planning to be in for the evening. She was in the middle of drawing the blackout curtains. She seemed nervous to Jago, perhaps as the prospect of another evening air raid drew closer. He also sensed a coldness in her manner, and wondered whether she felt she had revealed too much of her fragile nerves the last time he’d seen her. He noticed that she didn’t offer them a drink, and also that she showed no curiosity when he didn’t introduce Angela.

  “I have a few more questions to ask you and your husband,” he said.

  “Oh,” she said, “I see.”

  There was a silence. She struck Jago as tired and subdued, like a patient who’s been told the disease they feared has been confirmed.

  “You’d better come in here, then.” She opened the door to the living room.

  Jago entered the room first, then Cradock showed Angela in. Before Susan could say anything to her husband, he sprang to his feet. A look of alarm flashed across his face.

  “Here, what’s going on?” he said to Jago. “What’s that woman doing here? Who told you you could bring her to my house?”

  “George, what do you mean?” said Susan. “Do you know this woman?”

  “No, I don’t, but he’s up to something, and I want to know what.”

  Angela walked up to him, stood before him and looked him in the eye.

  “You bastard,” she said.

  She turned to Jago.

  “It’s him, Inspector – the one I told you about, the swine.”

  “The man you said had been paying you unwanted attentions?” asked Jago.

  “George?” said Susan. She looked from one to another in the group, as if she was the only one who didn’t understand what was happening.

  “Worse than that,” said Angela. “He’s been trying to ruin me.”

  She burst into tears and fumbled for a handkerchief in her sleeve.

  “How could I be so stupid?”

  Susan seemed even more confused, and this time she raised her voice.

  “I demand to know what’s
going on here.”

  Jago spoke quietly.

  “I suggest we all sit down and calm ourselves.”

  George, Susan and Angela obeyed him and took their seats silently.

  “Now,” said Jago. “Miss Willerson, perhaps you could tell us what you’re referring to.”

  “I told you someone had been pestering me,” said Angela, “but that wasn’t the whole story. I was trying to keep out of this.”

  “I think now you should tell us what happened.”

  “All right, I will. It was like this. I was having a quiet drink in the pub one evening, by myself.” She shot a glance at Cradock. “And before you start jumping to conclusions, Constable, I’m not the kind of woman who goes into pubs on her own every night. It was my local, and I wanted some time to myself.”

  Cradock tried to look as though that was the last thing he’d been thinking. Angela turned away and faced Jago.

  “This man came in and sat down at my table. He used my full name, Angela Patricia Willerson, which not even my friends know – my middle name, that is – and said he needed to talk to me. I told him to clear off, but he said he was on official business and I had no choice. All right, I said, but keep your voice down. So he did, but what he came out with got me really worried.”

  “What did he say?”

  “He said he was something called a voluntary interceptor, whatever that is, and he worked for the security service. He said he’d been investigating me. At first I thought he was having me on, but he knew everything about me – not just my name, but where I was born, my parents, where I live, where I went to school, people I’d worked for, everything – he even knew this was my local. What he said next really put the wind up me – he said MI5 were tracking people who were using wireless equipment to communicate with the enemy. He said he’d been watching me and had evidence that I was involved in that.”

  “Was that true?”

  “Of course not, and I told him so, but he wouldn’t have it. He started saying I was part of the Fifth Column, that I had links to Nazi sympathizers, and that I had a choice: to cooperate or go to prison. I was getting worried now. He didn’t look like the kind of man who’d take no for an answer: he was strong, forceful. I said there’d been some mistake, but he said no, there hadn’t, and then he started demanding money to keep quiet about it.”

  “Thank you,” said Jago. He turned to George.

  “Is this true?”

  “Why are you asking me?” said George. “It’s nothing to do with me. I don’t know what she’s going on about.”

  “It’s just that you seem to have a way with women. What can you tell me, for example, about another young lady, Miss Beatrice Cartwright?”

  “Never heard of her.”

  Jago pulled a buff envelope from his coat pocket, opened it and took out a man’s cap.

  “Is this yours, Mr Fletcher?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “I think it is, and I congratulate you on your taste in hats. It’s an expensive piece of headgear – not the sort of thing many people in West Ham buy. But then I can imagine you have expensive tastes. It’s almost new, too. We have a local gents’ outfitter who says he’s only sold one of these in the last five months, and the person he sold it to was you.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “You seem not to know what anyone’s talking about, but perhaps you’ll understand this simple fact. We found a couple of hairs inside the cap. I very much suspect that if I ask the pathologist to compare them with a sample of yours under a microscope, he’ll find that they correspond in all their natural characteristics.”

  Susan interrupted.

  “Why have you got George’s hat, Inspector, and why are you talking about hairs? What is this all about?”

  “Shut up, you stupid woman,” hissed George.

  “Mr Fletcher,” said Jago, “we’re here to find out why Mary Watkins died and who killed her, and I think you can help me.”

  “But I’ve never met her,” said George. “If you want to know about her, it’s my wife you want to talk to, not me. Or that lying witch over there.” He pointed at Angela.

  “So you do know this lady,” said Jago.

  His next words were overwhelmed by a noise that came from outside the house and displaced every other sound in the room – the rise and fall of the air-raid siren’s wail.

  Susan looked anxious.

  “Quick, everyone,” she said. “We must go down to the cellar – we use it as our shelter. Follow me.”

  As she moved across the room there was a pounding at the front door.

  “Stay where you are,” said Jago. “I’ll see who that is.”

  “But the bombs!” said Susan.

  “Just stay there for a moment,” said Jago.

  As he approached the front door the pounding continued. He opened it, and Celia half fell through the doorway, her hair slipping down over her face. She stumbled to a halt in the hall.

  “Didn’t you hear the siren?” she said. “You can’t leave me sitting out there in that little car with an air raid on! I don’t care what you’re up to in here, I’m coming in. Where’s the –”

  Her voice trailed off, and a bemused smile flickered across her face. She seemed to forget the sound of the siren.

  “Well, would you believe it?” she said. “No wonder you wanted me to stay outside. You never told me that lying rat would be here.”

  Susan followed the new arrival’s eyes to the hunched figure of her husband. He looked shocked.

  “George,” she said. “Who is this woman?”

  Fletcher stared at the new arrival and gave no reply.

  “Inspector Jago,” said Susan. “Who is this woman? What’s she doing in my house?”

  “Mrs Fletcher, I think we need to get to the shelter,” said Jago. “We can continue this conversation there.”

  “Yes, yes,” said Susan, casting a suspicious glance at Celia. “Come this way.”

  She took them into the hall, opened a door and led them down a staircase to the cellar that lay beneath the house. She flicked a switch and two electric light bulbs came to life, revealing a neatly arranged room fitted with props of six-by-six timber to reinforce the floor above. There were five chairs and a small table, mattresses and blankets on the floor, a wireless set, oil lamps, torches, buckets of water, an electric kettle, and what looked like a generous stock of dry foods. A selection of books stood in a neat row on a shelf, together with a pile of magazines. Jago wished he had something like this at home instead of his Anderson shelter. He could imagine getting some sleep in a set-up like this.

  Susan tried to speak confidently, but there was a tremble in her voice that she seemed unable to control.

  “We’ll be as safe here as in any Anderson shelter, but with plenty of space, and we’ll be dry, too.”

  “And if there’s a bomb with our names on it we’ll be blown to pieces just the same,” muttered Celia.

  Susan rounded on her, barely restraining herself from shrieking.

  “If you want to come into my house and use my shelter, will you please mind your tongue? Some people don’t find these air raids amusing.” She seemed to hear the harsh edge in her own voice and dropped it to a calmer tone. “Now, everyone, please make yourselves comfortable.”

  Five of the six people in the room sat down. Seeing there was no chair left for him, Cradock shrugged his shoulders and sat on the stairs.

  “I’ll ask you once again, Inspector,” said Susan. “Who is that woman?” She shot another cold glance at Celia, who responded with a sneer.

  “Allow me to introduce you,” said Jago, rising from his chair. “This is Mrs Celia Berry, wife of Richard Berry, known to you as George Fletcher.”

  The siren had stopped, and now there was silence in the shelter. It was broken by Susan, her voice barely more than a whisper.

  “What?”

  Celia replied, the sneer still lingering in her response.

/>   “Sorry, dear, I got him first,” she said. “We got married in 1938, and we still are.”

  “You mean –”

  “Yes, dear. I believe the word is bigamist – that’s the polite term for a man like him, but I can think of others.”

  Susan shook her head slowly.

  “I don’t believe this.”

  “You can believe it or not, dear,” said Celia, “but it’s true. Ask your husband – or to be precise, ask mine.”

  Susan turned to George, but he would not meet her eyes.

  “I’m afraid your husband has not been a model of fidelity, Mrs Fletcher,” said Jago.

  “Are you all trying to humiliate me?” said Susan. “Why? And what’s any of this got to do with my sister?”

  “It’s very much to do with your sister,” said Jago. “I suspect there may have been a liaison between your husband and Mary.”

  “No!” said Susan. “I don’t think I can take any more of this. George?”

  George grasped her hand.

  “It’s not true, it’s not true,” he said. “You know yourself I’ve never met your sister. You haven’t seen her yourself since heaven knows when. Don’t listen to him, Susan. And you, Inspector, stop making foul accusations when you have no proof. I told you, I’ve never met her.”

  “But I have a witness who saw you and Mary together last year,” said Jago. “So you had met her. What’s more, she told Miss Willerson here that she’d had a liaison with a man in the past, and I believe it was only when Mary saw a photograph of you in a different context that she realized who you were.”

  “What photo?” said Susan.

  “This one,” said Jago.

  Susan sprang to her feet. She grabbed the photo, studied it for a moment, then thrust it towards George and stabbed at it with the forefinger of her other hand. George stood up and faced her.

  “It’s not true,” he shouted. “They’re making it all up.”

  Anything he might have said after this was drowned by the crash of a bomb. To Jago it didn’t sound very close, but it was close enough. He saw Angela clutch her chest and give an anxious gasp, but what surprised him was that Susan seemed impervious to the noise. She stared coldly at George, turned her back on him and walked away. She stood at one side of the basement room, facing the wall and hugging both arms close to her body.