by Ed Ruggero
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Dedicated to the American Soldiers and Sailors
Who Lost Their Lives at Slapton Sands, England
April 1944
While Training to Liberate a Continent
Facilis descensus Averno.
The descent into hell is easy.
1
20 April 1944
0625 hours
There was a white-helmeted American military policeman at the alley entrance when First Lieutenant Eddie Harkins got out of the staff car. He could see the body about thirty feet in, lying next to some rubbish cans; but there was no crowd, not a single curious onlooker, dead bodies having become all too common in bomb-smashed London. Inside the alley, a man in a dark raincoat squatted near the corpse, while another man stood writing in a pocket notebook.
The MP came to attention when Harkins approached, gave him a snappy salute.
“Who are those guys?” Harkins asked the soldier.
“Brits, sir. Detectives. They said the woman, the victim, is American, so they sent for us. Me and my corporal got here a few minutes ago and they told us to secure the alley. Corporal Quinn is down the other end.”
Harkins looked up and down the street, blocks of two- and three-story buildings, the ground floors mostly shops, judging by the signs. Not one with all its windows intact. He wondered where the victim had been coming from or going to.
“They give you their names?” he asked the MP, nodding at the detectives.
“Yes, sir.”
Harkins looked at the man, who said nothing.
“Care to share them with me?”
“Couldn’t understand them, sir. I just can’t get the hang of these accents. Sorry.”
Harkins knew how the kid felt. He’d just spent two days in Scotland, waiting for orders, and he’d heard another GI ask, in all seriousness, what language the locals spoke.
He walked into the alley; the detective with the notebook looked up at him.
“You a copper?”
“Yeah. Eddie Harkins. And you are?”
“Just leaving,” the man said. “This is one of yours, and happy to hand it over.”
Harkins wasn’t sure of the jurisdictional issues, but the detectives seemed to be.
The second detective stood up. He was taller than the first one, face sallow, cheeks sunken, like a man with a wasting disease.
“Pulled this card from her pocket,” the tall man said. “She wasn’t carrying a handbag, or at least we didn’t find one. But she had a wallet, like a bloke’s wallet.”
Harkins took the proffered billfold, an identification booklet inside. Batcheller, Helen. American civilian. The tiny black-and-white photo stapled inside seemed to match the victim, though she looked considerably healthier in the picture. Her occupation was listed as “analyst.” Her employer was the Office of Strategic Services, the OSS, which happened to be Eddie Harkins’ new home in London.
“You a spook, too?” the detective with the notebook asked.
Harkins was looking down at the body, which lay faceup. The woman was missing her right shoe, the left one was worn at the heel.
“What’s that?” Harkins asked, when he noticed the detectives looking at him.
“You with the OSS?” The one with the notebook was talkative, maybe a little pissed off. He wore an old-fashioned fedora, the brim pulled down at a jaunty angle.
“Yeah, but I’m a cop. I mean, I was a cop. Then I was an MP.”
“But you’re not an MP now?”
“I don’t know yet,” Harkins said. “I just got here this morning.”
“First day on the job?”
“Yep.”
“Aren’t you the lucky bastard.”
Harkins squatted next to the body, examined the wound, one clean slice across the throat. The wide spray pattern of blood on the ground meant the cut most likely sliced both carotids; the killer knew what he—or she—was doing. The victim’s hands and sleeves were bloody; she had probably made a futile attempt to staunch the flow and save herself in the few seconds before she lost consciousness. Probably bled out in a minute or two.
“Any theories about where she was coming from or going to?” Harkins asked as he stood.
The man with the notebook said, “That’s your problem now, mate.”
“Don’t be an arse,” the tall one said to his partner. Then, to Harkins, “It’s just that we’ve had a lot of back-and-forth over jurisdiction with you Yanks. Tommy here is a little bit tired, that’s all.”
The tall man held his hand out, and the one named Tommy handed over his notebook.
“Why don’t you take a walk, Tommy? I’ll catch up in a bit.”
Tommy gave Harkins one more sour look, then walked toward the end of the alley.
“Name’s Hoyle,” the tall detective said, offering his hand. “Detective Sergeant.”
“Harkins.” The men shook.
“The way it started, this was back in ’42, any crime where both the victim and perpetrator were American was handled by your military authorities. If a British civvy was involved, either as victim or perpetrator, we investigated alongside your provost marshal. After a while it got so the American investigators were cutting us out altogether if a Yank was involved. Naturally, some of the fellas resented this. Tommy, for instance.”
“I see,” Harkins said. And he did. During his time as a Philadelphia cop he’d seen arguments over jurisdiction break into actual fistfights among detectives.
“Well, this victim is definitely yours, so you’ll take charge of the remains. Tommy and I will do a sweep of the neighborhood, see if we can scare up any witnesses.”
Hoyle wrote something in his notebook, then tore out the page and handed it to Harkins.
“Here’s my number. We’re at the station at Somers Town. Phone me at this number later today, sooner if you find something.”
As Hoyle walked away, Harkins saw the MP at the end of the alley talking to two American officers. A major stepped around the soldier and walked quickly toward Harkins, a captain and a civilian trailing. The civilian was dressed in a rumpled suit and carried a camera. The captain was very tall.
“You Harkins?” the major yelled when he was still twenty feet away.
“Yes, sir,” Harkins said, saluting.
“Glad you got my message to get your ass over here. I’m Sinnott; this is Wickman.”
Major Sinnott did not offer his hand. Wickman reached forward as if to shake with Harkins, then thought better of it.
That explained the first part of Harkins’ morning. He had reported to the reception desk inside OSS headquarters on Grosvenor Street, duffel bag on his shoulder and exhausted from an all-night train ride from Scotland, o
nly to have the duty NCO hand him a barely legible note with an address he read as, “Cramer’s Pancreas.”
Fortunately the duty driver, a young British woman in the drab uniform of the Auxiliary Territorial Service, deciphered the note and delivered Harkins to Cromer Street in Saint Pancras.
Sinnott was about five ten, same as Harkins, bigger through the shoulders and chest. His uniform, Harkins noted, looked tailor-made, definitely not from some musty quartermaster’s bin. When he removed his service cap to wipe his brow, Harkins noted the jet-black hair, slicked back like Clark Gable’s. Seemed a little fussy for a crime scene first thing in the morning.
“We have an ID,” Harkins said, stepping away from the body as the photographer went to work documenting the scene. “Name’s Helen Batcheller.”
Sinnott stepped past Harkins and bent over the body, cutting the photographer’s line of sight.
“Christ,” Sinnott said. “That’s a mess right there.”
He stepped away, checked the bottoms of his shoes for blood; Wickman did not approach the corpse.
“Know what the maquis call that?” Sinnott asked. He made a slashing move across his throat with one thumb. “A Gestapo collar. The Krauts use piano-wire garrotes; tighten ’em up real slow to get the poor bastards to talk.”
Harkins wanted to ask what a maquis was, but Sinnott never paused to take a breath. A real talker, this one.
“We’re going to run this investigation,” Sinnott said as he moved farther away from the bloody mess that had been Helen Batcheller. The photographer went back to work.
“What about the provost marshal, sir?” Wickman asked. He was easily six or seven inches over six feet, rail thin with narrow shoulders and long arms. He spoke softly, as if worried about interrupting someone’s nap.
“They’ve got that new branch,” Wickman continued. “Criminal investigators.”
“Criminal Investigation Division,” Harkins said. “CID.”
The new office—only constituted in January—was allegedly staffed by trained investigators and responsible for policing the vast numbers of crimes committed by GIs crammed into Britain.
“To hell with them,” Sinnott said. “We’re going to run our own show, no matter what those CID clowns do. Wild Bill is going to go ape-shit crazy when he hears about this.”
Harkins knew “Wild Bill” was Brigadier General William Donovan, legendary head of the OSS, the Office of Strategic Services, America’s blandly named spy agency.
Harkins had already held a number of jobs in his twenty-seven months in the Army, but he’d never been, never trained as, and certainly had never volunteered to become a spy or a spy-catcher. Yet here he was, and the folded set of orders stashed in his duffel bag clearly directed him to report to OSS, London Base. Major Richard Sinnott was his new boss.
“You’re going to have to survey the area,” Sinnott said to Harkins. “Look for witnesses who saw or heard something.”
The response that popped into Harkins’ mind—because he’d been up for twenty-eight hours—was something like, “No fucking kidding.” But he just nodded.
“I can talk to her coworkers and her boss,” Wickman said. Eager. He leaned forward, and Harkins wondered if he had a hard time hearing people who weren’t also freakishly tall.
“Harkins is going to take the lead on this,” Sinnott said. He watched Harkins’ face, gauging his reaction to this news.
Wickman looked surprised. After a few uncomfortable seconds, he said to Harkins, “Lieutenant, can you give us a moment, please?”
Harkins walked to the end of the alley near where the same patient MP stood. It was full daylight now, and the soldier was stifling a yawn as Harkins approached. As he expected, the brick walls on either side of the alley carried the conversation between Wickman and Sinnott nearly perfectly. You learned some things growing up in a city.
“Sir,” Wickman said, “I’d really like to get a shot at this investigation. Besides, Lieutenant Harkins was supposed to start training right away for his assignment.”
“That was before one of our people wound up in an alley with her throat laid open,” Sinnott responded. “Besides, Harkins has experience investigating murders.”
“I have three years in the Los Angeles Police Department,” Wickman said.
“Gold shield?” Sinnott asked. He didn’t sound curious, more like he already knew the answer.
“No, sir.”
“You drove a desk, right?”
Wickman didn’t answer. Sinnott called, “Harkins, come here.”
As Harkins approached, the camera’s flash turned the lake of Batcheller’s blood from deep crimson to black.
“Sir?”
“You conducted a murder investigation last summer, right? In Sicily.”
“Yes, sir. But I’m not a trained investigator.” Harkins almost said, “I wasn’t a detective, either,” but it would have been clear he’d been eavesdropping.
“I was a beat cop.”
“I heard you have good instincts,” Sinnott continued. “Got that straight from Colonel Wilbur Meigs, who was provost over there for General Patton.”
Harkins remembered Meigs, a World War One vet who’d come back in the service to lead the provost marshal’s efforts to maintain law and order amid the chaos of a combat zone. Back in Sicily, Harkins had spent an unpleasant morning with Meigs pointedly reminding him that supposition, guesswork, and half-baked theories were not the hallmarks of a good investigator.
“He’s the one who recommended you,” Sinnott said.
“Recommended me for what, exactly, Major?”
Sinnott smiled at him. Probably, Harkins thought, the same way the Romans smiled at a doomed gladiator.
“Don’t worry about that yet. For now, I want you working on this murder. The CID guys will probably show up at some point, but I want you to keep after it, too. Don’t get in their way, but keep after it.”
The three men looked down at the body. Lying on her back, one arm flung to the side and the other across her stomach, Helen Batcheller, late of the Office of Strategic Services, looked small and lonely. But she wasn’t inconsequential. She was someone’s daughter, maybe a wife, a sister. She was a volunteer, perhaps a critical contributor at OSS, certainly part of the vast footprint of American might come to help save the Old World. And at the end of her too-short life, she was a victim. Now it was up to Harkins to find some justice for her.
* * *
Harkins got word that it would be at least an hour before the U.S. Army hospital morgue could send a team for the body. He started pacing the length of alley, looking for clues, pieces of clothing, a handbag, the victim’s missing shoe—anything that might give him some idea of how and why she ended up here.
Sinnott grew bored quickly and left, Wickman and the photographer in tow. The MPs stood at their posts, one at either end of the alley, and after a few minutes the duty driver called out to him.
“May I approach, sir?”
Harkins could not remember her name; she was simply the driver who’d been up next on rotation from the motor pool that supported the American Embassy and OSS staff.
“Sure. Can’t hurt to have another set of eyes help me.”
When the woman drew closer, Harkins saw that she was young, about the same age as his sister Aileen, who would turn twenty-one in September. She wore a loose wool jacket and baggy pants, the bottoms of her trouser legs tucked into canvas leggings. Her face was thin. Like a lot of Brits, she’d probably lost weight since rationing started. Fifty-five months, meat scarce, cheese doled out in tiny bits not much bigger than a sugar cube, endless root vegetables grown in household gardens that might, during peacetime, have been rose beds. The DIG FOR VICTORY posters hanging everywhere always showed a colorful bounty that was hard to replicate.
“What’s your name?” Harkins asked.
She gave him a British salute, palm out, snapping her heels together.
“Private Lowell, sir.”
Harkins
returned the salute, then stuck out his hand.
“Harkins.”
She hadn’t anticipated a handshake and fumbled to remove her leather driving gloves, which made Harkins wonder if British officers ever shook hands with troops. Lowell had blue eyes and fair skin, a spray of freckles across her cheeks and nose. What hair Harkins could see peeking out from under her flat cap was curly, strawberry blond. She could pass for his sister.
“We’re going to walk the length of the alley again, see if anything looks out of place, anything doesn’t belong here.”
“Right. Very good, sir.”
The alley was no wider than ten feet, so Harkins and Lowell were practically shoulder-to-shoulder as they walked.
“You know the area around here?” Harkins asked.
“Saint Pancras? Just from driving, sir. I’m from Holloway.”
When they reached the body, Harkins half expected Lowell to look away. Helen Batcheller’s throat was sliced open, neck muscles and tendons gleaming wet in the dull dawn light. Instead, the young woman squatted down, much like Detective Sergeant Hoyle had done. She kept her knees pressed together demurely, though she wore pants.
“What do you see?” Harkins asked.
“Well, she’s missing one shoe,” Lowell said. She looked around. “I don’t suppose you’ve found it.”
“Nope.”
“So maybe she was dragged in here. Bit of a scuffle with the murderer. Lost her shoe that way.”
“Could be,” Harkins said.
“On the other hand, her clothes are blood soaked, but not disheveled. If there’d been a struggle her blouse would have come untucked.”
Harkins squatted next to the body to confirm Lowell’s observations.
“You look a little young to have been a cop,” Harkins said, standing again. “You an aspiring detective?”
“No, sir,” Lowell said, looking up at him. “I just read a lot of Sherlock Holmes when I was young.”
Harkins chuckled, but Lowell didn’t crack a smile. She hadn’t meant it as a joke.
“Yeah, of course,” Harkins said.
