Dominion

by C. J. Sansom

  She arrived at Kenton Station and walked home. Now, for the first time, she began to observe, to calculate. She thought, the house might be watched. If it was there would be someone in a car outside or very close. What would she do if there was? She realized there would be no point in running, they’d soon catch her and running would be a sign of guilt. No, she would go back to the house. But what if David wasn’t there? He might have come while she was out. She would look and see if he had taken any clothes. Then what? She would have to throw herself on Irene’s mercy. Then she thought of Geoff, steady, reliable Geoff. If David wasn’t there she would go to Pinner.

  There were a few cars parked at the roadside but none close to the house and none seemed occupied, though it was hard to be sure in the dim yellow streetlight. No lights were on in the house, none of the curtains drawn. She unlocked the door and went in. All was silent and still. The London telephone directory lay on the hall table where she had left it that morning. She went into the kitchen and switched on the light. Then she screamed.

  Two men were sitting at the kitchen table; they had been waiting for her in the dark. She saw that the back door had been broken open. One of the men was in his thirties, tall and thin, with a mean, hard face. The other was older, plump, with sad, pouchy features and untidy fair hair. He looked at her with cold, light-blue eyes: a horribly penetrating stare. Then he spoke, in what Sarah recognized at once was a German accent; not angrily but somehow sadly. ‘Good evening, Mrs Fitzgerald.’

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  AT KENTON STATION DAVID found himself reluctant to go in; he knew the Resistance people would have a far better chance of rescuing Sarah, but he felt that leaving now would be his final betrayal of her, as well as a final departure from his old life.

  He had never been to Soho during the day before. It seemed greyer, more ordinary – narrow streets, now filled with markets selling fruit and vegetables. The coffee bar beside the alley was closed; the alley itself looked even dingier in daylight. The door with the two bells beside it had, he saw, once been green but most of the paint had flaked away long ago, revealing strong old planks. He pressed Natalia’s bell.

  There was no answer. He waited and rang again but still no footsteps sounded on the stairs. He tried the door but it was locked. An old man in a threadbare overcoat, bent with age, shuffled down the alley and gave David a look of dislike as he passed; he must have thought him a client for the prostitute. David felt panic rising again, wondering whether something had happened here, too. He wished he didn’t look so conspicuous in his overcoat, pinstripe trousers and bowler hat.

  Eventually footsteps clattered down the stairs inside. The door half opened and the prostitute peered round the frame at him. She wore an expensive-looking silk dressing gown, her red hair curling around her face. ‘You’ve woken me, ringing the bell like that.’ She spoke crossly, then she recognized him and her face became suddenly alert.

  ‘Dilys, I need to speak to Natalia—’

  ‘She’s just gone to the shops. Is something the matter?’

  ‘I need to see her urgently.’

  The girl thought a moment, then said, ‘Come up.’

  David followed her up the creaking stairs, into a poky little bedroom dominated by a large, unmade double bed and a dressing table covered with pots and powders. The room was separated from the rest of the flat by a flimsy-looking door. It stank of cheap scent and cigarette smoke and was stiflingly hot, a gas fire hissing away in the corner. The girl sat on a hard chair at the dressing table and waved David to the bed. ‘Sit down.’ She turned to the partition, and to David’s surprise, shouted ‘Helen!’ A middle-aged woman in an apron came through the inner door. Dilys said, ‘We’re out of tea, love. Go and get some, will you? Get some groceries as well, take your time.’

  The woman gave David a stony look. ‘Be all right, will you?’

  ‘’Course I will. This one’s a shy boy, aren’t you?’

  With a doubtful look at David, the old woman left. Dilys smiled archly. ‘First time you’ve been in a place like this?’

  ‘Yes – yes, it is.’

  She nodded at the door. ‘Helen, she’s my maid. We girls always have an older woman working with us, to help us, keep us safe. Helen doesn’t know about next door.’ Dilys took a deep breath. ‘Something’s up, isn’t it? I can see by your face.’

  ‘I’m afraid so.’

  ‘Am I going to have to go?’

  ‘I don’t know. I’m afraid they’re on to me.’

  Dilys looked sad. ‘Luck always runs out in the end, doesn’t it?’ She spoke quietly. ‘Just give me fair warning when I have to go, will you ask them that? I’m okay for money, but I’ll have to look after Helen till we find somewhere else. I don’t want her in the clutches of the bloody Blackshirts.’

  ‘I’ll tell them.’

  ‘Thanks. Don’t say any more,’ Dilys added quickly. ‘It’s best I know as little as possible.’

  ‘Yes,’ he agreed. It was just what Carol had said to him over the telephone.

  ‘You can only tell what you know. Would you like a cup of tea?’ Her tone was suddenly cheerful again. Poor girl, David thought, she must have to put on a cheery face all the time.

  ‘No – no, thank you.’

  She glanced at him wistfully. ‘Nice-looking chap like you, bet you can get it whenever you want, eh? Don’t need the likes of me.’ David felt himself blush. ‘I see you’ve a wedding ring. Bet you’re the faithful sort.’ Her manner was bantering now, trying to keep her spirits up. ‘You got any Maltese blood in you?’ she asked suddenly.

  ‘Not that I know of.’

  ‘You remind me a bit of my Guido. The bastards deported him two years ago. England for the English, as they say. And for the Germans and Italians, of course,’ she added bitterly. ‘That’s when I joined up with you people. They put me here, to keep an eye out for you.’

  ‘Thank you,’ David said.

  Dilys opened a drawer of the dressing table and pulled out a bottle of gin and two smeared glasses. ‘Want one?’

  ‘I’d better keep a clear head.’ David realized he hadn’t eaten since breakfast. ‘You haven’t any food, have you?’

  ‘I’ll see what there is.’

  She went through the inner door, returning with some cold ham and bread and butter. David took it eagerly. Dilys sat at the dressing table, watching him eat while she swigged back her gin, the hand holding the glass trembling slightly. When he had finished she said, ‘Should I get ready to open up today?’ He looked at her blankly and she laughed. ‘For business. I usually open up at five, and it’s nearly four now.’

  ‘I think – maybe better not. There may be more of us coming.’

  She took a deep breath. ‘I’ll put a note on the door, say I’m ill. I’ve a couple of Friday regulars, they’ll be disappointed but it can’t be helped. Oh well, it’ll save me the trouble of getting ready, won’t it?’

  David looked at her curiously. ‘How did you get into – into this?’

  She frowned. ‘Shock you, does it?’

  ‘No. It’s just – I never—’

  She smiled again. ‘You’re quite an innocent thing, aren’t you? My dad died at Dunkirk, he wasn’t one of the ones that got away. My mum went to pieces, turned to drink. We hadn’t any money. A friend got me into this game.’

  He looked around the room. ‘Isn’t it – well – dangerous?’

  She laughed suddenly. ‘You’re asking, is what I do dangerous? That’s the pot calling the kettle black if ever I heard it.’

  It was fifteen minutes before footsteps sounded again on the stairs. Dilys sat up, looking relieved. ‘That’s Natalia.’ She went out and David heard the two women talking quietly. They came back into the flat together. Natalia wore an old grey coat and hat and carried a shopping bag; she looked dowdy and ordinary beside Dilys’ colourful femininity. David thought it was probably a look she cultivated deliberately, so as not to be noticed. It was sad she had to. His heart had lea
pt at the sight of her but then sank again as he thought of Sarah, out there somewhere, in grave danger.

  Natalia looked at him, then said quietly, ‘Come through. Dilys, I’ll tell you what’s happening as soon as I know.’

  They went back to Natalia’s flat. It smelt of paint as usual, but she had taken most of the pictures down, stacking them against the walls. Only the striking battle scene remained, the dead soldiers lying in the snow with the high white mountains in the distance. The room was cold. Natalia followed David’s gaze. ‘Yes,’ she said in a low voice. ‘I’m packing up, I’ll have to leave too. This is very serious.’

  He turned to her. ‘I’m sorry.’

  She smiled wanly. ‘It happens. We always have a fallback place ready.’

  They stood looking at each other for a long moment. Then Natalia said, ‘Sit down.’ David took a seat and watched as she switched on the gas fire, bending to slot pennies into the meter. She said, over her shoulder, ‘I am sorry I was out. One of our people came to tell me you’d had to run, and I had to make some telephone calls. Mr Jackson will be coming soon, Geoff Drax too.’

  ‘Geoff? Oh no.’

  She stood up and spoke sadly, almost apologetically. ‘If they’re making enquiries about you they will soon find out you and he are friends. I had to phone Mr Jackson at work. We don’t usually do that, we don’t know which Civil Service phones are tapped, but it was an emergency.’

  ‘What about the other man in the cell? Boardman, from the India Office.’

  ‘He’ll be warned. But there’s nothing to lead them to him that we know of.’ She sat down opposite him, a fixed expression in those clear, almond-shaped eyes. ‘Please, tell me everything that happened today.’

  She sat still and quiet as David explained, nodding occasionally. When he had finished she asked, ‘The woman Carol, you’re sure she knows nothing of what you have been doing?’

  ‘Yes. But – they’ll question her again. She was the one who warned me. They’ll make her talk.’

  ‘With luck she will only lose her job. If she knows nothing.’

  David took a deep breath. ‘The man I spoke to on the telephone said they’d send someone to fetch Sarah. That was always part of the deal: if anything happened you’d help her.’

  ‘We will.’

  ‘If only she’d been at home—’

  ‘You shouldn’t have gone back there, you know,’ Natalia said, her tone quietly reproving.

  ‘I didn’t know what else to do. If that man had answered the phone the first time—’

  ‘Yes. If he had to go out he should have got someone to cover him. That was a mistake.’

  ‘I didn’t know what to think when I didn’t get an answer.’ He smiled at her ruefully. ‘Somehow I’d thought you were all infallible.’

  ‘Nobody is infallible. Not us, and not them, either. They should have realized this woman Carol might go and warn you. Just occasionally, you see, they overestimate the power of fear.’ She gave him one of her long, steady looks. ‘This woman must be very fond of you.’

  ‘And now I’ve landed her in it. I’ve landed everyone in it, haven’t I? All because I misfiled that bloody document.’

  ‘As I said, nobody is infallible. But the question is, what led them to you in the first place?’

  ‘It all points to Frank Muncaster, doesn’t it? They’ve got him to talk.’

  ‘That seems possible, I’m afraid.’

  ‘Then it’s all been for nothing.’ David put his head in his hands. ‘Poor bloody Frank.’

  Natalia didn’t get up, but said, gently, ‘I’m sorry. It’s hard when you have personal loyalties.’

  He glanced up at her. ‘Don’t you have any?’

  She lit a cigarette from the pack on the table. ‘Not any more.’ She looked him in the eye. ‘Everyone I cared about is gone. That’s another thing the enemy don’t consider, that they might leave people with nothing else in their lives but to fight them. That’s what they’re doing in Russia.’

  David pointed at the painting of the battle scene. ‘You’ve left that one on the wall.’

  She said, ‘When my brother came back from Russia he told me about the last battle he was in. His leg was badly injured, that’s why he was sent home. He didn’t talk about it much, he couldn’t bear to, but one night he was in a bad state and he did.’ Her voice had become monotonous, holding in God knew what feelings. ‘It was in 1942, the Caucasus offensive, the Russians were defending a strong position and Peter saw a lot of his friends killed. Those are the Caucasus mountains in the distance. All in German hands now.’

  ‘I didn’t know that your brother came back. I thought he’d been killed.’

  ‘No. His leg was shattered, he didn’t get good treatment at the field hospital and he was never able to walk properly again. But it was his mind that really suffered. Some people can survive a war with their minds intact but not Peter.’

  David shook his head. ‘Yes, it always stays with you. It was because of what I saw in Norway that I felt the peace with Germany was right. Like all the other fools, I needed peace.’

  ‘Although you are half-Jewish.’

  ‘I told you,’ he replied bitterly, ‘we kept that well hidden. I pretty much hid it from myself for long enough.’ He paused. ‘Since we spoke I’ve wondered whether I might have family – second and third cousins, perhaps – who were on trains like the one you described. It makes me ashamed.’

  ‘Why? Because you have been able to escape the trains and these new British camps? You shouldn’t be.’ She spoke emphatically. ‘It’s not your fault you happen to be different in a way that gets you singled out. And you are fighting them, fighting the Fascists.’

  David smiled bleakly. ‘Making restitution, eh? When the anti-Semitic laws got really serious, that’s when I first began to feel ashamed. I suppose that was why I decided to join the Resistance. Everyone probably thinks I’m just another old-fashioned Englishman outraged by what’s being done. But I’m not, for me it’s personal.’

  ‘It is personal for all of us, one way or another,’ Natalia said quietly.

  ‘You mean your brother?’ They were talking intimately now, leaning forward slightly. The gas fire hissed gently in the background.

  ‘Partly. When he came back I nursed him at home. My father helped but he died later that year. Then it was just me and Peter. He wouldn’t go out, the only place he felt safe was in the house and even then he feared someone would come – Russians or Germans – and kill him. Not for any particular reason, but just because killing had become what people did. The strange thing was, Peter was so afraid of dying but in the end he killed himself, he jumped out of the window of our flat. We were on the third floor. He did what your friend Frank tried to do.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’ They were silent for a moment, then David asked, ‘What’s happened to Frank?’

  ‘Mr Jackson may know more.’

  He looked at her, then said, ‘You hate the Fascists, yet you had a German fiancé.’

  Natalia’s mouth set firmly. ‘He wasn’t a Nazi. And I wasn’t just his fiancé, I married him. I am actually a German citizen by law. I’m not sure I meet the race criteria, but we managed to fudge that – that’s the word, isn’t it? Fudge.’ She pointed at her eyes. ‘The Mongols reached the edges of my country, and it was part of the Turkish empire for centuries. I have some Asian blood from long ago.’ She smiled. ‘I have seen you notice.’ Her expression changed, became hard. ‘The most precious things in life can just be snatched away from you in a moment. But your wife, we will save her if we can. And she – well, she is your precious thing. Or you would not care so much about leaving her.’

  He looked down. ‘I . . .’ Slowly, he stretched out a hand. He needed the contact, he needed it.

  They both jumped as the doorbell rang violently. Natalia’s face worked for a moment, then she nodded quickly at David, got up and went out.

  David heard two more pairs of footsteps returning with her: Jackson and G
eoff. Jackson seemed angry; there were red spots on his plump cheeks. He was carrying a briefcase which he put on the table. He looked at David and said heavily, ‘Your chickens have come home to roost, I’m afraid, Fitzgerald.’ He walked over to the fire and stood with his back to it.

  ‘It’s not David’s fault,’ Geoff protested but Jackson gave him an annoyed glance, took a deep breath, then turned to David. ‘Full story, please.’

  David told him, leaving nothing out.

  ‘The woman, Carol, she was sure one of the policemen was a German?’ Jackson asked.

  ‘I don’t think she would make a mistake.’

  Jackson put his hands behind his back, rocked on his heels, thinking. ‘It’s the Gestapo, working from the embassy with Mosley’s people at Special Branch. It has to be.’ He stared out of the window; it was dark now. He said, in a gentler tone, ‘We’ve sent someone to your house, to pick your wife up. You’re quite sure she knows nothing?’

  ‘I’ve never given her even the vaguest hint.’

  Jackson looked at Natalia. ‘Well, it’s the end of this cell,’ he said heavily. ‘We close everything up here tonight.’

  ‘What about Dilys?’ Natalia asked.

  ‘She has to go, too. Tomorrow if she can. I suppose someone in her profession is at an advantage in a way, she can soon find somewhere else, continue working. I almost envy her.’ Jackson looked at David and Geoff. ‘I’m afraid you two are finished as agents. Done. Exposed. On the run. It’s better you both realize that now.’

  David turned to Geoff. ‘You, too?’

  ‘I left this afternoon, when they rang. Besides, I think they were beginning to have doubts about me. Lack of enthusiasm for the settlement programme in Africa; I’ve never been a brilliant actor. Of course, I didn’t have to act at first, I really did come back because of a broken heart –’ Geoff gave his little bark of laughter – ‘but that was a few years ago. Anyway, they’ll make the connection between you and me soon enough, it’s no secret we’ve been friends for years.’ He looked at Jackson. ‘I can stick it, sir, but what about my parents? Is there any chance you could get them away somewhere?’