No Human Enemy (Suzie Mountford Mysteries) (26 page)

Harvey had a shy smile. It was the first thing Jim noticed about him, a shy, unassuming smile and grey-green eyes, the colour of the North Sea. He was tall, well set-up as you would expect a Royal Marine sergeant to be. But Jim immediately knew that he’d seen Sergeant Harvey’s face before.

‘We served together, somewhere, Sarn’t?’ he asked. ‘Commando Training Unit? 41 Commando?’

‘’Fraid not, sir. No. Most of my war’s been spent at sea.’

He was efficient and got on with his job, soft-spoken, but firm. Men would instinctively obey him without question.

‘Good NCO,’ Colour-Sergeant Shaw said. ‘Knows how to keep the lads happy. You heard about the Cabinet Meeting tomorrow, sir?’

Jim Mountford
had
heard about the meeting but he just nodded. No point in showing his NCO that he was as excited as a schoolboy. Tomorrow afternoon at three o’clock he would see Winston Churchill, the living legend, the one who had told them all that they’d fight on the beaches and that they’d never surrender, when Jim was a schoolboy and Britain faced a hungry, trained and well-equipped German army at its gates. At that time nothing had stood between them and defeat: annihilation if you thought about it. But Winston had made everybody feel there was not just a chance but a certainty of victory. At that time, nobody had doubted the growling, gravel-voiced leader. They believed him and that was what was required.

Now, young Mountford would be entrusted with Churchill’s safety. The thought was enough to pop the buttons on his Blues jacket. Jim squared his shoulders and felt proud, knew his mother and sister would be proud, and probably his stepfather – the Galloping Major, whom he loathed – would also be proud. Fuck him, he thought.

Then Tommy Livermore turned up without warning. ‘Thought I’d look you up, old sport. Make sure you’re OK.’

‘My sister sent you, didn’t she?’

‘No. ’Course not, Jim. I came because I’ve never been down here. Always wanted to see it.’

This was in the morning of the day of the Cabinet Meeting. They would all be here this afternoon. Three o’clock. Fifteen hundred hours. ‘Well, you’ve seen it, now you can bugger off,’ Jim told him.

‘Don’t be like that, James. Let me have a look round.’

So Jim introduced him to Colour-Sergeant Shaw and Sergeant Harvey, took him along the passage, let him peep into the Map Room and the PM’s bedroom, with the little tin jerry under the bed. Tommy smiled, winked and mysteriously said, ‘Bingo’.

Then he thanked James, a shade too effusively, and left, giving James plenty of time to be at the CWR entrance from the basement of the New Public Offices, halfway along the main corridor, when the prime minister arrived at just after two-thirty in the afternoon.

He had already saluted the CIGS, Sir Alan Brooke – Colonel Shrapnel as he had once been called – on his arrival, and received a blistering salute in return, one that made Jim ashamed of the sometimes lazy way he responded to salutes; he had also been aware of Anthony Eden and Stafford Cripps as they arrived with a number of other important people, civilians as well as high-ranking officers of the Army, Royal Navy and the Royal Air Force.

When he arrived, the prime minister gave Jim a beaming baby-faced smile and addressed him by name. ‘Captain Mountford, I presume.’ He thrust out a hand. ‘Welcome to the CWR. Now, look after me well. I’m not as young as I was and my detective’s on sick leave.’

‘No, sir,’ James said, surprised that the great man had taken the trouble to acquaint himself with his name. ‘I mean, yes, sir.’

‘Good boy. Walk me to the Cabinet Room.

‘Make sure we’re not disturbed,’ he said with another smile as they reached the door to the Cabinet Room at the far end of the passage.

Jim saluted again and was aware of Sergeant Harvey leaning past him to close the door and saying loudly, ‘Very good, sir. I’ll do it straightaway.’ He closed the door and Jim noticed that Harvey was still holding the Cabinet Room keys he had taken to unlock the room earlier on Jim’s orders.

‘I’d better get them, then,’ Harvey said as he caught Jim’s eye.

‘Get what?’

‘The PMs cases. He just asked for them. From his car.’ Harvey started to hurry down the passageway to the entrance, past the prime minister’s bedroom/study on his right, and the big plant room containing the electricity and air-conditioning generators and subsidiary equipment on the left.

Jim looked round for Colour-Sergeant Shaw but he was nowhere to be seen. He could have sworn that the prime minister had not given any orders to Sergeant Harvey.

But a few moments later he saw Harvey return, lugging two great heavy metal cases, followed by Emily Styles using both hands to carry a third case. Harvey was breathing heavily under the exertion of carrying the cases and, as he came abreast of the Cabinet Room door, he called back to Emily, ‘Leave that one out here, in the passage. He doesn’t need that yet.’ Then, in an even more commanding voice, ‘There. Leave it outside the door! There!’ Pointing.

As he opened the door and slid the metal cases into the Cabinet Room, Jim Mountford glimpsed Winston Churchill half turn from his heavy wooden chair, looking puzzled, but before he had time to say anything, Harvey slammed the door and James heard the clear sound of the key turning in the lock.

Sergeant Harvey had locked the prime minister and his War Cabinet into the room.

And also at that moment Jim realised where he had seen Harvey before. His photograph, next to that of his brother, sliding out of a file that Tommy Livermore had brought into his sister’s living room. Gerald Lees-Duncan.

Pair of right Harrovian thugs you’ve got there all right, Tommy.

Not sure about the Harrovian bit but they’re certainly a pair of thugs. That one’s no longer with us, by the way,

Jim Mountford shouted. ‘Stop him! Stop Harvey now!’ and felt the man’s fist come up in an attempt to strike him in the face, felt the metal from the keys in Harvey’s hand and realised that he had more than one key clasped in his fist: a whole bunch.

He saw Emily make an attempt to grab the sergeant who brought his fist up again and hit her hard in the face. She gave a grunt and fell to one side, hitting the wall and crumpling into a heap. Blood on her face.

Jim grabbed for his pistol in its leather holster and tried to drag it out but changed his mind as he set off in pursuit, his brain teeming with the possibilities. What was in the cases? He stopped pursuing Harvey and shouted down the corridor. ‘Colour-Sarn’t Shaw! Spare keys! Spare keys to the Cabinet Office and the main door! Now! Quickly!’ Then he heard a rattling from inside the Cabinet Room and heard the prime minister growl, ‘Open this damned door. Get us out of here at once. What’s in these damned cases?’

Jim dragged out his Smith & Wesson .38 revolver and shouted, ‘Stand back, sir. Out of the way, I’m going to shoot out the hinges,’ and when he heard Churchill’s distinctive, ‘Good man. All clear,’ he put two rounds into each hinge, top and bottom, close to the wooden jamb, splintering the wood and twisting the metal hinges.

One of the two marines on duty outside the Cabinet Room helped to pull the door away, and from inside Admiral Cunningham, the First Lord of the Admiralty, finished the job.

Colour-Sergeant Shaw was at his elbow now. ‘The main door’s open, sir. He left it open.’

‘Get the prime minister out, Colour-Sarn’t. Now! All of them. Quickly. Get them out, this is bloody dangerous.’

‘What is this, young Mountford? Is it a Nazi plot?’ Churchill gave his distinctive pronunciation of Nazi – ‘Naazzzy plot.’

‘I very much fear it is, sir. Please move out. Fast as you can, sir.’

‘Good boy. Good boy,’ said the prime minister as he headed along the passage to the door that would lead him into the Public Offices building.

Jim looked at his watch. It was just five minutes to three. ‘Come on,’ he shouted to those of his squad who were already in the main passageway. ‘Let’s get these damned cases outside. They probably contain explosives so don’t tarry. Get them away into St James’s Park.’ He grabbed the nearest case and lugged it along the passage, feeling a terrible strain on his hands and arms. The case must have weighed a good hundredweight, and he felt his arms creak in their sockets. Two of his marines where heaving on the other case, and another couple of the lads had their hands on the one left in the passage.

Colour-Sergeant Shaw leant over to help him, but Jim motioned him away. ‘Help the young Maren,’ he ordered. ‘Get her out, Colour-Sarn’t.’

Emily was groggily trying to get up as Shaw reached her. Then another of the marines arrived to assist Jim with the case. They both grunted and groaned as they half carried, half dragged the metal case out into the basement of the Public Offices building, then up and out into the afternoon sun.

As they emerged, Jim saw, first, Tommy and then his Suzie. Behind them were several uniformed police officers surrounding Gerald Lees-Duncan. ‘Get out of the way, Tommy … sis…’ he yelled. Then to his men, ‘Get everyone out of the way! Get those cases out into the park! Away from the buildings!’

People had crowded around to see what was going on and the marines had to shriek at them, physically driving them back.

Exhausted by his exertions, chest heaving, arms strained in their sockets, Jim managed to get the message to Tommy, and some of the uniformed police broke away, shouting at the sightseers, urging them to get out of the way. Jim heard somebody yelling, ‘UXB. Unexploded bomb! Get the hell out of it.’

They dragged the case across Horse Guards Road and onto the grass of St James’s Park. The two marines dragging the other case from the Cabinet Room had left it on the grass, and Jim, panting and heaving told his companion to drop it and get away. The third case was now nearby, and Jim began to run back towards Horse Guards Parade, shouting to everybody to take cover. He saw Tommy and Suzie drop to the ground and the small knot of police officers hustle away the captive, Gerald Lees-Duncan.

Then the cases erupted, the sound of each explosion merging into one thunderous roar.

It was exactly three o’clock.

By this time Jim Mountford was flat on the ground near his sister. The noise battered his eardrums and he felt the shock wave. As it dwindled away he heard his sister say,

‘Vot vos dot?’

And Tommy replied, ‘Dot vos a bomp.’

He thought they were both mad.

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

Tommy said they were damned clever, the bombs. ‘If it had worked the PM and the whole Cabinet would have been wiped out. Immediate thought would have been that it was a V-2 rocket. Would’ve shaken everyone rigid.’

‘There’d be no metal, though. No traces of a rocket,’ Suzie countered.

‘Nobody was going to look
immediately.
’ Tommy did his all-knowing and omnipotent look. ‘Would’ve given brother Lees-Duncan time to slip away. The three cases made a crater about thirty feet across. The things went off right on three o’clock. Most efficient timer.’

Jim asked if they knew what the explosive was.

Tommy said it was plastique as far as they could make out. ‘The new stuff. C-4 I think they call it. Pounds of it, with nails and bits of old metal mixed in.’

‘So where did that come from?’

‘That’s the one thing lacking at the moment. Maybe we’ll knock it out of him in time.’ Tommy shook his head. ‘I don’t know what we’re going to do with him. General view is we’ll never get him in front of a judge. Nobody wants to admit that we allowed an assassin to get that close to Winston.’

‘There are other things we’ll never know.’ Suzie looked at him archly.

‘Such as?’

‘Such as did Dulcimer lure Michael to his death or did Michael just want to see if he could get her out of that nasty old habit.’ She chortled, overdoing it a bit.

‘You took your time getting there,’ Jim grumbled to Tommy.

‘Well, I thought you’d have the fella in irons. I recognised him straight off. Tipped you off; said “Bingo”. Did everything. Ball in your court.’ Tommy had started pronouncing ‘off’ as ‘orf’.

‘How did he work it?’ Jim was still in the dark.

‘Turned up, out of the blue, at Exton. Royal Marine Camp down near Exmouth. It’s the Pre-OCTU – as you know – and a holding unit. They had nothing about Harvey. But, amazingly, within an hour of him being there they found a signal posting him to the CWR. Bloody Jerries were light on their feet. I’ve seen the paperwork and it all looks first rate. Genuine as a five-quid note. Must’ve landed him near Exton somehow. He arrived on the train platform, as I say, out of the blue. Went to the guardroom and was in.’

The next day some decisions were made and Tommy went over to see Mother Rachel and tell her that the business of a man being found dead in the convent would not get into the press. They were keeping quiet about it.

‘Thank the Good Lord for that.’ Mother Rachel was as ecstatic as her position would allow. ‘I was dreading headlines in the
News of the World.
It would’ve been a terrible scandal. M
AN
F
OUND IN
C
ONVENT
H
ORROR
.’

By way of a thank you, Tommy and Suzie were invited to the nuns’ evening meal on the following Sunday. Tommy grumbled of course, didn’t want to go, but in the end it was a most enjoyable evening: Fresh poached salmon (‘Poached in every way, I believe,’ Mother Rachel said with a twinkle), new potatoes, garden peas and a strawberry mousse. ‘You mustn’t think we always eat like this,’ Sister Eunice whispered to Suzie who nodded sagely.

After the meal they went into chapel for the sisters to chant the divine office, and Suzie was in her element because the slow rise and fall of the plainsong brought back memories of her childhood and the time she had spent at St Helen’s when her father was still alive.

After chapel it was announced that there was to be a special entertainment, and they all sat in the Sisters’ recreation room, while Sister Agnes did her famed impression of an elderly canon reciting ‘The Charge of the Light Brigade’. Sister Cleo did her conjuring tricks, and very good she was: making silk handkerchiefs change colour, producing billiard balls from the air and linking solid rings together.