Ormerod's Landing (30 page)

Ormerod shrugged. 'That's him, sir,' he said. 'Can't think what he wants. Probably thinks I'll make a good batman or caddy. I traipsed around the golf course with him. He'll have another think coming if that's what he's after. God, I could hardly walk for a week after that.'

'Well, he wants to see you, so you'd better go,' Lowe laughed.
'This could be one of those things when we don't see you until after the war George. You'd better pay the tea club and empty
your locker.'

'The tea club's paid and there's nothing in my locker except a spare pair of shoes. I don't keep a lot there. After all, you never know when you might not return from Battersea Park in this job.'

The Superintendent frowned. 'Oh come on, George. We're
doing as much as we can. It's not very spectacular, I know,
police work, but people still steal, kids still go missing, and the
peace, such as we have, has got to be maintained.' He stood
and thrust his head towards Ormerod, like a bull. 'Most of the
manpower of this country is now sitting on its arse waiting to
see if the Germans make the next move. Personally I'd strike
back now, while they're taking a breather. Invade in the Brittany area, around Brest. Get around the back of the bastards. Strike first.'

Lowe was one of those who really believed it, despite the fact that at that moment elderly men in quiet hamlets where
there had been no violence since the Conqueror were sharpen
ing pitchforks and seriously hoping to annihilate a Panzer division. Ormerod had no inclination to argue, indeed he was not sure he did not agree. He went out and took his spare shoes from his locker, just in case, and then went home.

On the following morning he took the underground to West-

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minster. He was early so he walked through the park to the War Office. The bombing of London had not started in earnest for the Luftwaffe were attacking Biggin Hill and other airfields from which the British fighter planes were taking off to intercept the bombers. It was a promising summer morning with the trees and flower beds shining with sun and freshness. There were pyramids of sandbags all around. The pelicans squatted ponderously on the lake. Around the park were anti-aircraft guns and people walked about, their gasmasks either in oblong cases like picnic boxes or in tubular tins. Policemen wore their newly-issued, cumbersome revolvers a little selfconsciously.

Although he was a Metropolitan policeman, Ormerod never felt at home in Central London. He was never sure where anything was for a start. He produced his warrant card, asked a policeman the whereabouts of the War Office and was treated to a supercilious grin for not knowing. If he had asked at random, and without showing his authority, he might very well have been taken for one of the mythical German parachutists the entire nation was hunting.

There appeared to be a complete regiment guarding the War Office and it was some time before he could persuade anyone to let him in, although a cheerful milkman breezed right through the defences while Ormerod stood waiting; soldiers and policemen kept coming to have a look at him while he stood awkwardly in a waiting room, bare of any decoration except for a poster warning against careless talk which announced : 'Walls Have Ears.' He pursed his lips as though to stop himself divulging a thousand secrets.

A frowning corporal of military police came in. The man had a bright red face as if he were always shouting and a small moustache like gold wire.

'Department Four BX,' recited the corporal. 'That's where you're heading. Part of MIR, see. Military Intelligence Research. Got your authority, have you?'

The man knew full well that he had both his warrant card and the authorizing letter because he had already asked for them, and seen them, twice. Ormerod had also displayed them to numerous other security guards and officials, so faceless

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they could have been phantoms. 'It's getting worn out,' he observed to the corporal, handing the authority across. 'The paper's not all that thick.'

The military policeman had no concealed channel of humour. 'It should last,' he grunted. 'These sort of things are done on thin paper, you understand, in case they have to be destroyed. There might come a day when every bit in this building might have to be. Follow me.'

Ormerod went after him, conjuring a mental picture of the entire staff of the War Office frantically chewing thin secret
paper in the face of an advancing German army. They went through many corridors hung with signs and arrows and across two large chambers where senior military men were talking in
whispers, their voices hissing up to the tall ceilings.

They arrived at a lift which was not working because of the
war and they had to walk up twelve flights of stone steps to reach the fourth floor. 'I'll come and fetch you to take you out
again,' said the corporal stiffly as they walked by doors marked with titles like algebra problems. 'We don't like visitors memor
izing their way around.'

'No, well you wouldn't, would you,' agreed Ormerod, puffing
after the exertion of the stairs.

His escort gave a stiff sniff which hissed along the vacant
corridor like the lash of a whip. They reached the second of two doors marked 'Four BX. Strictly No Entry' and the corporal knocked with what Ormerod thought might be a secret signal. The 'No Entry' sign was obviously another clever ruse to fool the enemy because the door opened quite easily and they went in.

Ormerod was relieved to see that, after the frigid aspect of the outer corridors and their denizens, this office was com
fortingly untidy with two desks not quite in line or order, piles of paper and haphazard trays, one of which was loaded crazily
with dirty tea cups. A cheerful girl clerk, with a pneumatic bosom almost rending the buttons of her uniform tunic, got up from the floor where she had been collecting the spilled
contents of a box of paper clips. Ormerod took her in appreci
atively as she got to her feet, red-faced and slightly out of breath. The escorting corporal said: 'This is Detective

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Sergeant Ormerod.' He hovered, apparently undecided whether he ought, after all, to leave Ormerod there. The girl decided him. 'Thank you, corporal,' she said sweetly. 'You can leave him with me. He'll be quite safe.'

'Oh yes,' blinked the corporal. He cast a last suspicious glance at Ormerod and then withdrew with military movements. Ormerod grinned sheepishly. I thought he might ask you to sign for me,' he said.

'Don't put ideas into their heads,' the girl pleaded. She looked around the polished floor. 'Now are there any more of these blessed clips down there? I'm always doing it. Knocking them down.'

'Put in for a magnet,' suggested Ormerod, bending and picking up two clips from behind the leg of the desk. 'Pick them all up more or less at once then. And you won't lose so many.'

The girl looked at him with some admiration. 'You know, I never thought of that,' she beamed. 'I will. I'll indent for a magnet. I expect they'll ask why, but it's going to save hundreds of man-hours, well woman-hours, during the whole war, isn't it? You're not a sort of boffin are you? One of those people they have in the special department? Not everyone would think of getting a magnet. I wouldn't for one. And this is supposed to be Intelligence, Four BX.'

'So I hear,' nodded Ormerod. 'But I'm not a boffin, whatever that might be. I'm a policeman.

'That's right. Of course you are. Well, in your job, you obviously have to think logically as well, don't you?' She wrote down the word 'Magnet' on a pad. 'Brigadier Clark will see you in a minute. He's got a Frenchman in there at the moment. You should see all his medals. Acres of them. You wouldn't think they'd lost. Would you like some tea?'

Ormerod eyed the cups and she saw him doing it. 'You'll get a clean cup,' she promised. 'Don't take any notice of those.'

'Oh, all right. Thanks,' said Ormerod. 'What are they there for then? Those cups? Another booby trap for the Germans?' She grinned at him. He said: 'They come in here, dying for a cup of tea, drink out of one of the poisoned cups and urgh! Another Hun dead.'

'You know that's not a bad idea,' she said, busying herself

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with a teapot. She took two clean cups from a cupboard and
held them up so he could see. 'Perhaps we could extend it. Open
all the cafes along the south coast and fill them with dirty cups. The Germans land, rush for a cup of tea at the Bognor Esplanade Tea Rooms, and they're wiped out to a man. Not bad.'

'Make sure all the pubs open when they land,' contributed Ormerod. 'The beer's like poison now, anyway. That should take care of the ones that don't drink tea.'

The inner door opened to destroy the fantasy. A tall man in the uniform of the Free French Forces came out of the room followed by Brigadier Clark. Both men put their caps on and saluted each other, shook hands and then saluted each
other again, a performance which, for some reason, acutely
embarrassed Ormerod. He had uncertainly risen to his feet
at the first salute, in the same way as he would have done had the National Anthem been played, half sat down at the hand
shake and then stood up again at the second salute. The French
man, only glancing at him, went out briskly and Brigadier
Clark took off his cap and shook hands with the bewildered
Ormerod who had thought that because he had put his cap on he was leaving the room. The officer saw the reason for his expression. 'Had to salute,' he said, motioning Ormerod into his office. 'So had to put the damned cap on. Can't salute without a cap you see.'

'Oh, that's right,' recalled Ormerod. I seem to remember now.'

'You didn't really have enough time in the army to get any rank did you?' said Brigadier Clark indicating a chair. He opened a folder and glanced inside. Ormerod stared at the folder as he sat down. The Brigadier balanced on the corner of his desk. He was a tall man and his feet were comfortably on the floor.

'Rank? Me? Oh, I rose to lance-bombardier,' said Ormerod.

Clark laughed good-humouredly. 'At least in the police force
you've done a bit better than that,' he said. Then immediately,
'Are you sorry you're out of the army, Ormerod?'

Ormerod said: 'Well, to be honest, no sir.' Then he slowed and looked at the officer carefully. 'And anyway, I feel I'm

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doing a worthwhile job as I am. I mean we're all here together
now, if you understand my meaning, sir. All besieged. If the
Germans come we'll all be in the army won't we? They've given the police guns and that's not to direct the traffic is it?'

The answer obviously amused and satisfied Clark. He nodded
and smiled and went around to the chair behind the desk. 'You won't have to worry,' he said. 'I'm not giving you your calling-
up papers. Would you like some tea?'

Ormerod said yes for the second time in ten minutes. As if
she had been eavesdropping the busty girl came in with a tray
and poured two cups for them. They had sugar too, Ormerod
observed, obviously part of the emergency rations in case of a
siege. For the first time in months he took two lumps. He looked
up guiltily but nobody seemed to mind. The Brigadier refused
and Ormerod thought it was strange that the girl should have
offered it to him. If she worked there she must have known that
he did not take sugar. Then it occurred to him that he had
taken the officer's lump as well. He felt embarrassed and even
thought of fishing it out again. But it was already well dissolved.

There followed a difficult silence, the staff officer and the
detective drinking tea from thick WD cups. It was an occupation that required complete attention at least until the heavy
brown tea was lower than danger level. Once it was they could
look at each other again. Embarrassed, they both looked up at the same moment. Clark seemed too shy to say something he
wanted to say.

'Er ... played at all recently, sir?' Ormerod asked to fill the void.

'Played? Oh, golf. No. Well, not much. The war seems to be
getting in the way. Just get a decent fourball arranged and
dammit if there's not a red emergency from the coast or something. I'll wager if Jerry does turn up I shall be somewhere out on the fourteenth and by the time I get back the whole bloody
show will be over.' He seemed relieved that Ormerod had given
him a start. 'Ormerod,' he said. 'I've found out where your murderer chum is holed up. Wasn't all that difficult, actually.'

The policeman felt his eyebrows rise and his jaw drop. 'You
have, sir?' he managed to say. 'Where would that be?'

Brigadier Clark pulled down a map of Europe on the wall

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behind his desk. 'Right there,' he said pointing to the middle of
Normandy. 'Bagnoles de l'Orne.'

He turned from the map to see, as he expected, Ormerod's astonishment. It appeared to embarrass him and he went back to the map again.

'Nice spot,' he mumbled. Then, more firmly, 'Was before the war anyway. Played golf there. Very genteel and so on, full of
old ladies with bad legs and chaps with sticks, but that's what you get at a watering hole don't you? The water comes from
the spring at a steady eighty-one degrees. Supposed to work
miracles with various afflictions and aches. Story goes that years ago some farmer chap had a very old horse and rather than have it put down he sent it to die in the forest. Blow me if the brute didn't come back looking twenty years younger. He'd found the magic spring. The farmer followed him and bathed in the well with miraculous results. I took the waters there myself once, although I can't say it made me feel any younger. Very good for the feet though.' At once he looked
directly at Ormerod across the desk. He said deliberately: 'You
really ought to try it sometime.'