No Human Enemy (Suzie Mountford Mysteries) (18 page)

‘You’re all work, Tommy.’

‘Me? I’m a bundle of love, heart. I’m the prisoner’s friend and I’m jolly well incarcerated by love for you.’

‘You say the sweetest things, Tommy. And I love you as well.’ Tommy, she knew, could be dead romantic when he put his mind to it.

‘I should bloody well think so and all,’ he said now. ‘Sleep well and dream of me.’

‘Of course, angel.’

‘And don’t forget to send me all the paperwork.’

At that moment Tommy Livermore had no way of knowing that this request was going to turn the Doris Butler murder case inside out.

Dennis and Shirley were waiting just inside the main doors, protected outside by an anti-blast wall of sandbags.

‘All aboard whose coming aboard,’ Dennis said, raring to go. Shirley was hungry and said so. ‘One of the WDSs says they do a good hotpot at the New Inn.’ She licked her lips, overstating as usual.

They were almost outside when a police cadet came stumbling after them – ‘WDI Mountford, ma’am, there’s a telephone call for you.’

It was her brother, James, ringing from a telephone box in Leicester Square, so he said. ‘Thank heaven I’ve tracked you down, I’m harry flakers.’ He sounded frantic, which didn’t ring true. ‘They’ve taken off the plaster. I can walk … Well hobble. Going to give me a new posting soon.’

‘What d’you want, Jim?’ All heart.

‘Can I use the flat? I don’t want to trail back to Newbury tonight.’

‘You’ve got a key. I won’t be back until sometime tomorrow. Use the spare room and for heaven’s sake don’t answer the telephone in the main bedroom, it’s a bit iffy.’

‘Trust me, sis. Great.’

It was only after she cradled the phone that she realised her brother might not be on his own. She put her head back and laughed aloud.

*   *   *

SS-Gruppenführer Max Voltsenvogel had flown back to Berlin. He spoke to three people in the intelligence community, then went down to Rastenburg where the Führer was still directing things, ordering the arrest of the officers implicated in the bomb plot. There was to be a big show trial and it seemed that the Führer was more interested in vengeance than the slowly disintegrating situation in France.

It was not pleasant at the Wolf’s Lair; in the summer, the log-built wooden buildings trapped the heat, there was the pervading sweet smell of rotting vegetation from the nearby marshland, and the camp was under constant attack from biting insects: gnats and mosquitoes. An unhealthy place.

Max wanted to see and be seen, and he was pleasantly surprised to note that the attempted assassination appeared to have given the Führer a temporary new lease of life. He was directing the search for the July plotters with a fresh vigour. More, he did appear to be making concrete plans to counterattack the Allied assault along the coast of northern France. He looked older, his eyes glinted feverishly, he had trouble with his left arm, but he could still give the impression of confidence, the certainty of victory.

(Only a few months later he disintegrated into a shuffling mockery of himself.)

‘The winter will hold them up, just as it delayed our forces in Russia,’ he claimed – though ‘delayed’ appeared to be a significant understatement. He also said the difficulty the Americans and British had experienced around Caen and other areas had completely thrown out their invasion plans. Yet below Caen the Allies were holding up armour, so allowing their other forces to head for the Seine.

Hitler’s version of the situation was pie in the sky and this concerned Voltsenvogel. Initially he had maintained that they were ‘going to get the thrashing of their lives on the beaches’. Now they were off the beaches. The fighting along the established bridgeheads was desperate, terrible carnage, but the six armies that had been landed in Normandy were making progress; and here was Hitler thinking about counterattacking in the winter when they were hardly nudging September.

SS-Colonel Voltsenvogel drove out to the airfield and ordered his pilot to fly the Storch back to his headquarters: to Group Odin in Holland.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Lieutenant James Mountford, Royal Marines, came out of the telephone box his face blossoming into a wide smile, ear to ear, like a Cheshire cat, cream all gone. The jeep was parked five paces away, by the kerb, Leading Wren Emily Styles, wearing her Maren beret, sitting at the wheel in shirtsleeves, there in Leicester Square, dusk coming on.

‘Upper St Martin’s Lane, Styles,’ he commanded, the goofy grin almost consuming her. ‘Upper St Martin’s Lane, and don’t spare the ’orses. We have somewhere to rest our weary ’eads.’

‘So we don’t have to trail round hotels.’ Emily pronounced it ’otels just like she’d been taught at the snooty school where they’d tried to educate her, without any real cooperation.

Emily Styles, tall, slim, leggy – she would hoik her skirt high on her thighs when driving – sumptuous in the upper areas, glossy brunette with a small, almost urchin, face, big brown eyes and a moist mouth, lovely lips. ‘I’ve probably got a touch of the tarbrush,’ she would say, looking in a mirror, licking the lips and pushing her nose up with a forefinger to better examine the nostrils. There was certainly a thickness there, and her lips suggested something of the Negroid physiognomy even though she came from good county stock. She sometimes wondered if an ancestor had strayed in the colonies and now the secret was out.

That morning she had driven James from Newbury to the hospital near Oxford where the plaster cast was removed from his foot, and they had examined the wound in his shoulder, pronouncing it healed. Satisfied that he was heading towards fitness they gave him some remedial exercises and allowed him to take off the sling. He was told that he now had to get used to walking and using his arm. ‘You’ll be getting a new posting in a matter of weeks,’ the surgeon commander said. ‘We need all the able-bodied men we can find, though I don’t see you back with your old unit for a few months. No more commando-ing as yet. Just get the foot and shoulder back in action, good man. Right, send in the next.’

James said, ‘Aye-aye, sir,’ which is the correct thing to say to surgeon commanders, with the red lines between the gold stripes of rank.

When he told Leading Wren Styles she asked, ‘You going to practise on me, sir? Using the arm, I mean. Doing your remedial exercises?’

‘’Course I am.’ Toss of the head. They had become quite chummy from the telephone calls and the drive to the hospital. Now James did not have to worry about what he was going to tell his mum about tonight. Mums, he considered, still expected to be told everything even though he was a commissioned officer supposedly fit to lead great big hairy marines into battle.

He navigated while Emily drove, across to Trafalgar Square and on towards Charing Cross Station on their right – ‘I know the way now,’ she yelled happily – left up St Martin’s Lane, and at the top pulling up outside the Edwardian block of flats.

They had eaten earlier, in Oxford, a tiny café opposite the House. The café did wonderful egg and chips, and James pointed out Christ Church College opposite, starting to explain that colloquially it was referred to as the House. She waved him aside saying her brother had been up at the House. 1935–38, got an oar on his bedroom wall to prove it.

Now, outside the flats she screwed up her face and said, ‘This is where I came in, sir.’ Hopped out, disabled the jeep, removing the rotor arm, getting her little issue suitcase (‘my ditty bag’), scooping up the cardboard box of supplies she had liberated from the Wrenery kitchens next to the hospital – eggs, bacon, a loaf of bread, pint of milk and a link of sausages the cooks said were gash – Navy for surplus to requirements, going spare.

James had his case but took the rotor arm and slung her navy raincoat and her jacket over his arm, peeping into the box. ‘Well done, Suzie didn’t say if she had any food stored away.’

‘Suzie? Your sister the cop?’

‘That’s the one. She nearly arrested our stepfather once. At least that’s what she says. I wasn’t there at the time.’

‘Hope she doesn’t bust in here and arrest us in the middle of the night.’

‘She won’t; she’s on some Agatha Christie case out in the sticks.’

She stayed close to him as they went into the building. ‘Don’t have to help you up the stairs this time, do I, sir?’

‘Don’t have to help me cop an armful of bust either.’ In fact it wasn’t easy going up the stairs. After only a few hours out of plaster his foot was bloody uncomfortable.

‘Don’t know what you mean, sir.’

‘Of course not.’

In the hall, just inside the door of the flat she said how nice it was. ‘I thought that when I brought you here before. Roomy, isn’t it? High ceilings. Great. Wonderful.’

He showed her around: the big drawing room she’d seen last time, with the phoney Canaletto over the fireplace, the kitchen – tidy and clean – the bathroom, where he thought it best not to mention what had gone on in there during the Blitz: the attempt to murder Suzie in that room, better keep quiet; didn’t want to scare the pants off her. On reflection though … then the dining room with the Caroline table Mummy had bought for a song, just along from the two spare bedrooms, one with a big double bed, rust-coloured curtains and the two pictures his father had bought his mother on their honeymoon, big canvasses, dark autumnal woodland scenes; James could never see the point, too gloomy for his taste.

Emily in the corridor still loved it all, talking too quickly, too much, about the high ceilings, space, the mouldings on the dado, picture rails and the ornate lighting roses. ‘Smashing flat,’ she said, knocked out. ‘Wonderful,’ again.

‘Needs decorating.’ He looked at the outdated light blue paper with the little gold fleur-de-lys above the dado and the slashed crimson below: all faded and tatty now: old-fashioned trying to be up to date, the paintwork chipped and discoloured.

‘Same everywhere,’ she said. ‘When the war’s over I expect your sister’ll do it up, get the decorators in; Sanderson’s will be selling loads of new wallpaper.’

‘And Jimmy will go to sleep, in his own little room again.’ James sang a snatch from ‘Bluebirds over the White Cliffs of Dover’. ‘It’s Mummy’s really,’ sounding distracted. ‘Bought it with a legacy soon after she was married. When Daddy died and she remarried she never told my stepfather. We thought she was hanging on to it as a bolthole, just in case the marriage went wrong. Then Suzie sort of commandeered it, left home and took over.’

They were in the doorway of the larger of the spare rooms. ‘Look. You have this one. Have the big bed. Enjoy it.’ Edging her inside. ‘I’ll have the smaller one.’

She turned towards him, into him, looking up. ‘We’ll see,’ long, long pause, ‘sir.’ Breathy, throaty. He took a step closer and thought, Christ, those big eyes could chew you up and spit you out. He could smell her, her hair, her body. Then she lifted her face and he bent his head to her.

At school, not so long ago, there had been a boy called Barnard, bit older than him but with a reputation of knowing about women. Barnard had said to him, ‘Kissing’s important. Chaps don’t realise. Straight off they try to climb down a girl’s throat. Not the way it’s done. First time you’ve got to brush your lips on hers. Don’t ever steam in and stick your tongue into her mouth. What you do is keep altering the pressure, keep moving your lips, then, just at the last minute, touch her lips with the tip of your tongue, just the tip. You let it run along her lips. Not wet and sloppy, but dry, sort of titillate her lips. Then, if she wants that, let her lead, get really into the kisses. That way you can distract a girl, they like that, and before you know what’s what … Well, you’re all over her and she’s all over you.’ As an afterthought he’d said, ‘Don’t go after her like a battering ram. This is a gentle loving thing. ’Cept when she wants it otherwise. Don’t go crazy.’

So James did it, and Barnard was right. He let their lips touch, brush, held together by hardly a whisper, then let the tip of his tongue run outside her lips.

Her arms came up and she opened her mouth. He thought she was going to swallow him whole and suddenly he had an unusually large steel spigot between his legs. God, he thought. God, it’s going to happen, and they were on the bed and he began to fumble with the buttons on her shirt.

‘Let me.’ She gently pushed him away and the buttons came undone and so did her bra. She slid the waistband of her skirt round and undid those buttons as well.

‘They’re not pusser’s,’ he said, staring. In the Royal Navy pusser meant one hundred per cent RN; correct; naval issue.

‘Going to put me on a charge, sir? Have me up in front of the Jaunty for not wearing my blackouts?’ She had a delicious giggle, like ice cream over treacle with a dash of honey, he thought, though that didn’t make much sense. She spoke quickly, low and into his ear as she altered the position of her body. ‘When I first joined the Andrew, we had this nasty little dykey petty officer.’ The Andrew was the Royal Navy. ‘She used to say, this petty officer, “I can see you’re all wearing your pusser’s lisles – our issue stockings – and I hope you’re wearing your pusser’s drawers. I don’t want to see none of that fancy French lingeree.” Well, darling sir, that’s my fancy French lingeree.’ She slipped them off and James could hardly contain himself. His hand rested on her pusser’s lisle, just inside her thigh, then moved up. He felt her, like a soft excited bird under his cupped hand, while she took him gently with her fingers and, in one movement, put him where he should be.

‘Welcome, sir.’

‘Hall-o.’

They were off and he couldn’t get over it. Oooh Lord, I’m actually doing it, he thought, actually doing it with lovely little Emily Styles.

‘Oh, sir,’ she breathed. ‘Oh, darling sir.’

Oh heck. We’re doing it. Wondrous. Magnificent. Makes you believe in miracles and everything.

‘Oh…’ they both said. ‘Oh. Oh, and Oh.’

‘Oh, sir.’

‘Oh, Emily. Angel. Love.’

Then the repeated affirmatives, urgent, quite strident and a great rush at the end, like a factory whistle.

When it was over and they lay together, happy, all lovely and full of things, she said, ‘Sir?’