by Mike Hollow
“Sure – we call them streetcars. Boston’s full of them, except ours are single-deckers and run on overhead wires. We have the El too – that’s the Boston Elevated Railway, and it runs through the city twenty feet up in the air.”
“Trains in the air? That sounds dangerous.”
“No, it’s not a railroad, it’s streetcars. We don’t have as many as we used to, though. They’re being replaced by buses and trackless trolleys now – what you call trolleybuses, I think.”
“Same here – there’s hardly any trams left in London, and most of those are south of the river. The last ones in West Ham stopped running in June.”
The tram began to move, the whirring hum of its electric motor rising as it picked up speed, and the wheels below them squealed on the rails, steel grating sharply on steel. The river was dark and sluggish on their right as they bumped and swayed along the Victoria Embankment.
“You were talking about evil, and bringing people to justice,” said Jago. “I think the biggest thing for me is that I just can’t bear the thought of them getting away with it. I mean, why should a man who murders a girl live to a comfortable old age with his grandchildren on his knees? It’s not fair. I don’t want that to happen – I want him to face justice. I feel the same way about this war. The Nazis have got away with it in Czechoslovakia, in Poland, in Belgium, France, Norway and more besides, and I don’t want them to get away with it here. I want us to fight them with everything we’ve got. Even if we lose, at least we’ll have tried. I can’t bear the thought of criminals escaping justice.”
“I was brought up to believe that we’ll all be judged when we die.”
“Do you believe that? I’d like to, but I don’t. What if we all just live and die, and then there’s nothing? There has to be justice before death, otherwise they’ve got away with it.”
“I don’t believe there’s just nothing after death. I can’t prove it, but I do believe there will be justice. You believe in truth, don’t you?”
“Well, we can’t always tell what’s true, but if I didn’t believe that truth exists regardless of whether we can discover it I wouldn’t be able to do this job. So yes, I do.”
“I do too, but I believe justice is a consequence of truth, so if there is truth after we die, there will also be justice. I can’t believe Hitler’s going to be sitting there in heaven, patting his favourite dog. So I guess I’m like you – I don’t want anyone who does evil to get away with it. But that means I mustn’t expect to get away with it myself.”
Jago twisted round on the seat and looked ahead.
“I can see Waterloo Bridge,” he said. “We’re almost at your hotel.”
The conductor called out the stop. They descended the narrow staircase and stood on the platform until the tram came to a standstill, then climbed down onto the road.
“Mind the traffic,” said Jago.
They waited until a car passed, its single headlamp shedding a dim light on the roadway, and then crossed to the pavement.
“I’ll walk you to the Savoy,” he said.
Only a few days before, he had avoided this area because he’d been wary of bumping into Dorothy. Now, he realized, he had no desire to avoid her, but he knew there was still something he had to say.
They turned into Savoy Place. They were only yards from the hotel.
“Let’s stop for a moment,” he said.
She stopped, and he turned towards her. Behind her the windows of the hotel were already darkened, but he could half see her face as the first of the moonlight broke through the clouds.
“There’s something I need to tell you,” he said. “If we both believe in truth, I don’t want you to think I’m more than I am.”
“Why would I think that?”
“That night when you introduced me to Sam – it wasn’t the first time I’d seen him. I was at RAF Hornchurch last week, at that dance, and I saw you with him, saw him kiss you. I didn’t know he was your brother. It was stupid and childish of me, but I assumed he was someone that you were – well, to put it simply, you could say I put two and two together and made five.”
“Or maybe even six or seven?”
“Yes, that was very foolish of me. I’ve thought about that a lot since Wednesday, and I can only apologize. I’m sorry.”
“Thank you.”
“I think it must be something to do with what happened all those years ago in France, when I knew Eleanor.”
“You don’t mean it’s my sister’s fault?”
“No, not at all. It’s my fault, but I’m trying to understand. I think it’s because when I developed that affection for her and it came to nothing, I felt I’d failed – with women, I mean. I thought if I played that game I was bound to lose. So I concluded that that part of life was not for me, and I suppose from then on I avoided women – in the sense of relationships, that is. I didn’t want to go down that path again. By the time the war ended, I don’t think there was enough left in me emotionally to take it on. I was exhausted.”
“Did you wish she hadn’t gone away?”
“At the time I did, yes. I felt that she’d let me down.”
“Like I did?”
“If I’m brutally honest, then yes, that’s how I felt in that moment when I saw you. When I saw him kiss you, I felt as though you’d betrayed me in some way. I know that’s stupid – I have no claims on you – but I was surprised by how painful it felt.”
Dorothy put her hands on his upper arms and looked him in the eye.
“I guess what you saw that night at the dance touched a nerve that you weren’t expecting to be touched – that you maybe thought wasn’t even there any more,” she said. “That’s natural. It’s just one of those things. You can put it behind you now.”
“Thank you,” said Jago. “It was only when we were sitting on that tram just now that I realized what was happening. It’s as though I’ve been running on tramlines. But a tram can only take you to one place. If you want to get to somewhere interesting down a side road you have to get off and make your own way. And when I saw you with a handsome young man in an RAF pilot’s uniform I could think only one thing. I’m ashamed to say that’s one of the oldest tramlines in the world.”
“I understand,” said Dorothy. “Thank you for being honest with me.”
He felt her grip on his arms release, and then she took both of his hands in hers. He flinched at the unfamiliar touch, but then relaxed. He held her gaze.
“The answer’s simple, then, isn’t it?” he said. “I think it’s time I changed – it’s time I got out of the tramlines.”
“I like the sound of that,” said Dorothy. “It could be a much more interesting journey, don’t you think?”
Jago nodded. A cloud drifted in front of the moon, but in the momentary fading of its light he thought he saw her smile.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
As in Direct Hit, the first of the Blitz Detective novels, I’ve tried to ensure that the historical events that form the backdrop to the murder mystery are portrayed as accurately as possible. Some readers have asked me whether specific incidents mentioned in Direct Hit really happened – for example, the demonstration at the Savoy Hotel – and the answer is yes.
The event that sparked Fifth Column was real – a trial in December 1939 in which a London man was convicted of attempting to extort money by threatening to accuse someone of spying for Germany. This started me thinking about how and why such a crime might occur, and the entirely fictional case which Detective Inspector Jago investigates in Fifth Column is the result.
I would like to thank two of my former BBC colleagues: Richard Measham for his helpful advice on the wartime Radio Security Service, and Dave Crisp for explaining the inner workings of 1930s wireless sets. Thanks to author Richard C. Smith for helping me with some details of RAF Hornchurch. I’m also grateful to Barry Scrutton and his team for literally opening doors for me in Canning Town, and to local residents Alma Clunn, Doreen Fox, and Molly Morgan for shar
ing their memories of the old days with me.
I’m once again indebted to Richard White, Rudy Mitchell, and Roy Ingleton for their help with details of the Riley Lynx, the American aspects of the story, and wartime policing respectively.
As ever, my thanks go to my family for encouraging me, and to my wife Margaret for supporting me during the long writing process and for her invaluable critical scrutiny of the finished work.
To find out more about the Blitz Detective and to contact the author, go to
www.blitzdetective.com
Fifth Column is the second book in the
BLITZ DETECTIVE
series
Don’t miss the first in the series…
Direct Hit
PROLOGUE
FRIDAY 6 SEPTEMBER 1940
He was alone, and there was no one to help him. Trapped in the silent space between two rows of graves, he heard every rasp of the madman’s breath. The reek of stale beer soured the air between them as the dark figure grabbed his lapels and pulled him close. The attacker’s face was vicious, and the cap yanked down onto his forehead was shabby. No witness could have identified him, even if there had been one in this gloomy wilderness of the dead. But Hodgson knew him well enough, and wished they had never met.
It was absurd. There were houses just a hundred yards away. He could trace the outline of their roofs and chimneys against the night sky to his right. But in the depths of the blackout, with not a light showing anywhere, he might as well be on the moon. The only people out at this time of night would be the ARP wardens and the police, and he could hear no sound of them. They would have plenty of things to attend to.
He knew he was trembling, but could not stop it. He was out of his depth, overwhelmed by a familiar surge of panic. His father used to say dogs and horses could smell fear, so maybe people did too. He remembered the two women who’d stopped him on Stratford High Street in the autumn of 1916 and given him a white feather. Perhaps they could smell cowardice on him. He could have made an excuse: he’d been officially ruled unfit for military service in the Great War because of his short-sightedness. But no, he just took the feather without complaint and went on his way. He knew they were right: he was a coward through and through.
Now he heard himself babbling some futile nonsense about reporting this to the police. The man released his hold on one lapel, but only to slap him in the face. The sting bit deep into Hodgson’s cheek, and his glasses rammed painfully into the bridge of his nose. He wanted to cry. It’s just like the way gangsters slap hysterical women in the pictures, he thought. He knows that’s all it takes with someone like me.
“Not so high and mighty now, are we, Mr Hodgson?” his tormentor snarled. “I think it’s time you started putting a bit more effort into our little arrangement. Don’t you?”
He flung Hodgson back against a gravestone. Its edge cracked into his spine and he slumped to the ground.
Humiliation. Again. All through his life. His wife might like to think he had some status because he worked for the Ministry of Labour and National Service, but he knew his post was shamingly junior for a man with twenty-four years’ service. After all this time he still wondered if she knew what kind of man she had married. But he knew, only too well. He saw himself, eleven years old, and the gang that set about him on his way home from school, older boys looking for fun in their last term at Water Lane. His West Ham Grammar School uniform made him an easy target. When they snatched his cap and tossed it onto the roof of the nearest house, he understood for the first time in his life that he was a victim. They were just a bunch of fourteen-year-old boys, but he was outnumbered and powerless. Now he was outnumbered by one man.
“I will, I will,” he said. “It’s just difficult. You don’t understand.”
“Oh, I understand all right,” said the man, hauling him back onto his feet.
Hodgson pushed his glasses back up his nose to straighten them. Now he could see the scar that ran three inches down the side of his assailant’s face, just in front of his ear. The man didn’t look old enough for it to be a wound from the last war, and not young enough to have been involved in the current one. He tried not to think how he might have got it.
“You just look here, Mr Hodgson. You’re a nice man, so I’m going to give you one more chance.”
The sneer in his voice made his meaning clear. He pulled a crumpled piece of paper from his trouser pocket and stuffed it into the inside pocket of Hodgson’s jacket, then patted him on the chest in mock reassurance.
“Right, Mr Hodgson, you just sort it for this little lot, and there’s a pound in it for you for each one. Mind you do it right, though. If you don’t, I’ll shop you, or worse. Now you won’t forget, will you?”
Hodgson hurried to give his assurance, relieved that the ordeal was over. Before the words were out of his mouth, he felt the first blow to his stomach, then a second full in his face, a third to the side of his head and another to his stomach. After that he lost count.
