The Shadow of Treason (17 page)

Approaching the shack, Adam saw yet another injunction on the door: ‘Home Guard Personnel Only’. By now he was convinced that elements of the Home Guard must be involved in the black market. The government had kindly provided them with this lair in the wilderness to store illicit goods. Perhaps Mark Jefferson had found out, and had to be silenced. Maybe he’d
actually
been involved and was killed by rivals. Adam hadn’t known Jefferson well enough to judge which was the more likely. But Jane had been fond of Jefferson, so he hoped it was the former.

The robin had packed up for the day, and now all was silence, but Adam had begun to feel he was being watched.

He mounted a step onto the verandah of planking, which increased the resemblance to a cricket pavilion. It occurred to him that the area must have been playing fields before the war. He hoped a sporting spirit still prevailed.

He was now in front of the door. It seemed sensible to knock, as he had no wish to surprise anyone. So he rapped firmly on the door with his knuckles. A voice shouted, ‘Come in,’ so he turned the handle and entered.

The place was almost bare: plain wooden floor, plain wooden walls, no guns to be seen. Presumably, soldiers brought their weapons with them when they used the range. There were several church-hall-type chairs and one table.

At this table, on the far side of the room, sat a man in unkempt khaki battle-dress, buttons of his tunic undone. He was a big man, and he didn’t smile.

As instructed on the phone, Adam led off with ‘I’m a friend of Sniffer Dean’.

‘That’s a novelty,’ said the man. ‘He doesn’t have many of those.’

‘He said we might be able to do some business,’ said Adam.

‘Yeah, I’m sure we can,’ said the man. ‘Come over here and sit down.’ He still wasn’t smiling.

The man’s manner wasn’t that of someone with something to sell. This was all wrong. And there was no sign of whisky anywhere.

Suddenly Adam felt a violent sense of danger: all his instincts screamed at him to run. He turned quickly but already there were two men behind him, between him and the door:
tough-looking
characters, not in khaki but in sweaters and dark trousers. One of them kicked the door shut.

‘Bring him over here,’ said the man in khaki, and the other two took an arm each, shoved Adam across the room, and pushed him down into a chair.

Adam didn’t resist. Three against one was odds he didn’t fancy. Not at the moment, anyway. For now, it would be better to use his brain. Were they simply after money? He’d led Sniffer Dean to think he had plenty of cash.

‘What’s the idea?’ he asked, firmly but pleasantly. ‘I’m here to buy some Scotch.’

‘You’re here to answer questions, Webber,’ said the man in khaki. ‘And you’d better have the right answers or you’re in for a very hard time!’

Adam was shaken by the threat, but the use of his surname was an equal shock. He’d been careful to give Dean no hint of his identity. Things were turning nasty but he decided to ignore the name and try to keep up the façade. He did his best to speak calmly. ‘What are you talking about? This is an odd way to treat a customer. I was going to put a lot of business your way.’

‘Cut the crap!’ The man spat out the words. ‘You know what this is about. You and your mate Jefferson nicked something that belongs to a friend of ours. Or he nicked it and passed it on to you. Either way, we want it back. And you’re going to tell us what the hell you and him were up to.’

‘Jefferson wasn’t my mate. I only met him a couple of times.’ Now they were getting down to basics, Adam thought the man might let something slip. He said, almost casually, ‘Jefferson was killed, wasn’t he? Did you kill him?’

The man was getting angry. ‘I’ll ask the bloody questions!’ he
snarled. ‘Don’t waste time! Jefferson burgled the Tilfleet Home Guard and took a logbook, right? And then he gave it to you and your bird. So where is it?’

‘Logbook? I don’t know anything about a logbook.’

The man in khaki snorted with exasperation. Then he nodded to the other two. One of them yanked Adam to his feet and held his arms. The other hit him hard in the stomach and then in the face. The first man released his arms and rabbit-punched his neck. After that, the second man smashed his fist against Adam’s head, knocking him to the ground. Then both men kicked him.

Dizzy with pain, Adam still judged it would be foolish to fight back. In a brawl tempers would flare, and they could easily kill him. As things were, they wanted him alive to answer questions. He’d let them play it their way for now; he might even learn something. He lay sprawled on the floor, breathing hard.

‘That’ll do for now,’ said the leader. ‘He can’t talk if he’s unconscious. Get him up.’

The two men dragged Adam to his feet.

‘Search him,’ said the leader. ‘He’s not likely to have it on him, but you might find something.’

One man held Adam’s arms again while the other went through his pockets. He extracted a handkerchief, which he threw on the floor, then some change and a small piece of
cardboard
.

‘What’s that?’ asked the man in khaki.

‘Return ticket to London.’

The leader laughed for the first time: a short, sharp, very unpleasant sound. ‘Well, he won’t be needing that. Give it here. And he won’t want the money either. I’ll have it.’

‘Hang on,’ said his underling, with a hint of defiance.

‘It’s all right,’ said the leader. ‘I’ll share it out later.’

Adam watched the money being handed over. ‘You’re supposed to give me whisky for that,’ he ventured.

‘Shut up about the bloody whisky!’ barked the man in khaki. ‘There isn’t any bloody whisky! Sit him down again!’

The men dumped Adam back on the chair like a sack of
potatoes
. His interrogator leaned across the desk and brought his face up close to Adam’s.

‘Listen, you stupid bastard,’ he said. ‘You’re alone. You’re miles from anywhere. No one can help you. We can work on you all day if we have to.’

‘I’ll be missed,’ said Adam. ‘I’ve got friends who’ll go to the police.’

‘No, they won’t. The police are after you too. They’re all set to top you for murder.’ He stared into Adam’s eyes for several seconds. Then he continued. ‘You’ll talk in the end, that’s for sure. The joker on your right can do some very painful things with a razor, without killing you. You won’t be dead but you’ll wish you were. Right, Sid?’

‘Yeah, that’s right.’ Sid chuckled with pleasurable
anticipation
. ‘I can arrange your face so your own mother wouldn’t know you.’

The man in khaki resumed. ‘You talk now, you’ll save
yourself
a lot of grief. We might even let you go in a couple of days, when it doesn’t matter.’

What did that mean? Adam wondered. What would change in a couple of days?

‘OK, let’s try again,’ said the man. ‘For a start, where’s the logbook?’

Several areas of Adam were hurting badly. Should he admit that a logbook had fallen into his hands? It was probably just an account of black market dealings. What the hell did it matter? He could say he’d had it and lost it. But then, if they forced the whereabouts out of him, there’d be danger for Leo at the Marine Research Unit. And also for Jane. He rejected the idea of telling them anything. He’d try one more bluff.

‘For God’s sake!’ he shouted. ‘You’ve told me there’s no bloody whisky! I’m telling you there’s no bloody logbook! I came here to buy booze for my mate who runs the club!’ A desperate idea came to him, and he continued more quietly, but urgently. ‘He knew I was coming here. That’s his money you’ve
taken. If I don’t get back with the Scotch, his men’ll be coming after you!’

The man in khaki looked at him with contempt. ‘Balls!’ he said. He turned to the man on Adam’s right. ‘OK, Sid, he’s all yours for half an hour. Just remember, I don’t want him dead, and I don’t want him unconscious.’

Sid was reassuring. ‘Don’t worry, he won’t croak. I’ll just take off a few bits he won’t miss much.’ He took out a thin leather pouch, from which he produced a cut-throat razor. He opened the razor out. ‘Only he might go mad and start jerking about. Better cuff him.’

‘Right,’ said the leader. He spoke to the third man. ‘Get the cuffs, Stan.’

There was a first-aid cabinet fixed to the wall. The
ginger-haired
thug on Adam’s left went and opened it, and took out a pair of handcuffs.

As he did this, Adam’s mind was racing. His passive policy would have to change. And fast. Once they had him
handcuffed
, all hope was gone. This was the moment he had to act.

He put both hands under the table, heaved, and tipped it over onto the man sitting opposite. At the same time he jumped up and threw a punch at Stan as he returned from the cabinet, then spun round and smashed his fist into Sid’s face.

It should have been no more than a doomed act of defiance. But then the V2 struck.

There was a deafening explosion, accompanied by a crashing of wood and turf and other flying debris, and a scalding tornado of wind, as the giant rocket, launched at London from Holland minutes earlier, missed its target. It landed on the firing range twenty-five yards from the hut where Adam was being tormented, and detonated on impact.

The explosion blew out the nearest side of the shack and brought down most of the roof. A section fell on the man in khaki, pinning him to the floor. A large piece of the ‘Danger: Live Ammunition’ notice felled Sid. Adam’s punch had already put the third man on the floor, and now he was covered with debris.

Demonstrating that there is sometimes a reward for virtue, the mighty blast left Adam dazed, but unhurt. He staggered briefly, and then the sight of the ginger-haired thug pushing off the debris and getting to his feet swiftly cleared his mind.

Ludicrously, Adam headed briefly for the door. Then he
realized
that escape would be much easier via the space where the wall used to be. He ran through the gap, and carried on running.

He had a twenty-yard start on the ginger-haired Stan, who was trying to pull something from his pocket. Sid and the chief thug were slower to move, but seemed to be conscious.

S
ITTING ON A
bench at the edge of the field, the man in the dark suit had witnessed the effects of the explosion but, since it was on the other side of the shack, he’d stayed unruffled. He remained seated, pulled out a walkie-talkie radio, spoke into it with calm urgency, and then returned it to his inside pocket.

He saw two figures emerge from the shattered building and head towards him. One appeared to be chasing the other.

Adam hadn’t looked back, so he wasn’t aware that there was only one man following him. For all he knew, all three thugs could have recovered and might now be on his tail, perhaps with guns. So Adam just had to keep running and try to reach a place where there were people, ordinary people, whose
presence
should deter the villains. Here, in the open fields, he was at their mercy.

His thought was to get back to Chalksea station: there might be people there by now. Besides, it was downhill. So he was running back along the path that would take him past the bench on which the man in the dark suit was sitting.

Adam was a natural athlete but the beating he’d taken had temporarily sapped his strength. His limbs were heavy and sore, he was fighting for breath, and there was a burning pain in his side. His progress was getting slower as he drew level with the bench. And then his progress ceased altogether, as the man stretched out his rolled umbrella and hooked the handle neatly round one of Adam’s flying ankles. Adam tumbled flat out onto the grass.

His pursuer drew up, registering both surprise and triumph. Then he stooped over Adam and put his hands round his throat. As he bent over, the man in the dark suit swung his umbrella in a wide arc and hit him hard on the back of his head. In itself, the wooden handle would not have enough weight to cause much damage but the lump of lead buried inside caused the man to drop like a stone.

Adam sat up, bruised and bewildered. He looked back and was relieved to see there were no more pursuers. He peered at the man on the bench, convinced he’d seen him before. It had been pretty unkind of this character to trip him up but, on the other hand, he had dealt with his enemy very effectively.

Adam looked the man in the eye and said, ‘Why did you do that?’

‘You looked as if you could do with a lie down,’ the man replied. ‘Besides, it’s time you and I had a chat. I’m afraid you’ve been keeping bad company.’

Adam’s defence mechanism was alerted. ‘Are you police?’

‘No,’ said the man. ‘What happened there? I mean, before the bomb?’

‘This man and two others lured me to that Home Guard place. Then they started beating me up.’

The man clicked his tongue. ‘Tch. People behave very badly these days.’

‘Then the bomb knocked two of them out, and I was able to run.’

‘It’s an ill wind that blows nobody any good, as they say.’ The man pondered. Then he produced a polite query. ‘You say they lured you there? How exactly did they do that?’

Adam thought quickly: he was in danger of saying too much. ‘I was thinking of joining the Home Guard.’

The man smiled tolerantly. ‘Really? With the war almost over? A bit like joining the Swiss Navy.’

Adam sat on the grass, wondering what to do next. Common sense said he should get up and move off fast. His other two tormenters could still recover and come after him. There was no
reason why he should stay here, answering this chap’s
questions
. He should be getting back to London. But they’d taken his money and his return ticket. And the man on the bench had an air of confidence and authority that was somehow reassuring. Besides, Adam was exhausted. So he carried on sitting there.

By now, south-east Essex was reacting to the V2. Air-raid sirens were heard and then the urgent bell of a police car coming up the lane, followed by a Civil Defence van. From the opposite direction came an ambulance. All the vehicles stopped near the entrance, and people began getting out.

First through the gate were two policemen, one with sergeant’s stripes on his arm. They saw the man on the bench, and came over to him. Now it was too late for Adam to run.

‘Mr Hoskins?’ asked the sergeant.

‘Yes.’ The man on the bench nodded genially, then produced a card and showed it to them. ‘A good quick response, Sergeant. Well done!’

The sergeant beamed. ‘Thank you, sir. What’s the situation?’

‘Big explosion on the firing range over there. Almost certainly a V2, falling short. Another of Adolf’s triumphs. I doubt if anyone was out there, getting hurt. But two men were injured in that building when it collapsed – we don’t know how
seriously
.’

‘There’s an ambulance standing by.’

‘Well, try and get to them first. And be careful. I’m pretty sure they’re professional criminals. If they can move, they’ll have made themselves scarce. If they’re still there, they could be dangerous.’

‘We’re armed, sir.’

‘Good. If you catch them, nick ’em for GBH. Likewise this character.’ He prodded Stan’s inert body with his umbrella. ‘All three were assaulting Mr Carr here.’

The penultimate word hit Adam like an electric shock. It had been bad enough when the man in khaki had thrown in his recent name, which he wasn’t supposed to know. Now here was another stranger casually using the name he was born with, the
name he’d tried to leave behind. Adam wondered how he should react. But his brain was too tired for policy decisions.

‘Very good, sir,’ said the sergeant. ‘I’ve got back-up on the way. We’ll just make sure this comedian doesn’t go anywhere. Cuff him to the leg of the bench, Fletcher.’ The unconscious thug was secured. ‘Good. Now we’ll go and sort out the other two. What about this gentleman, sir? Is he injured?’

‘Possibly,’ said Hoskins. ‘He’s coming with me. He’s needed back in London as soon as possible. I’ll commandeer that
ambulance
to take us to the railway station. The ambulancemen can clean him up on the way.’ He turned to Adam. ‘You never know, you might even get a nurse.’

‘Right you are, sir,’ said the sergeant, and the two policemen walked off towards the wrecked pavilion.

Adam mustered a bit of spirit. ‘What if I don’t want to come with you?’

Hoskins smiled. ‘I’m afraid you don’t have any option, old chap.’ He opened his jacket to reveal not only a light blue
waist-coat
but also a shoulder holster, from which protruded the butt of a small hand-gun. ‘Anyway,’ he continued, ‘you’ll be better off with me. This place will soon be swarming with policemen, all in a position to charge you with a hundred different offences.’

‘I’m not guilty,’ said Adam.

‘We’ll see,’ said Hoskins. ‘At least I’ll ensure you get a chance to prove that. On the run, you’d still be in danger from that lot.’ He nodded towards the remains of the Home Guard shack. ‘And another thing,’ he added. ‘Co-operate with me, and Miss Hart will be pleased.’

Oh God, thought Adam, is there nothing this man doesn’t know?

Hoskins rose to his feet. ‘Let’s go, shall we? Get some iodine on those cuts. And then I think you and I can help each other.’

Adam stood up wearily and looked at his captor. ‘You said you’re not police,’ he said. ‘And yet they all do what you tell them. Who are you?’

‘Forgive me,’ said Hoskins. ‘I should have introduced myself. James Hoskins, Commander, British Intelligence.’ He advanced a hand. ‘How do you do?’

As the train began to move, Adam sat back in his seat and felt it was time to make a statement. The other man’s firm but friendly manner encouraged him to speak out. ‘Can we get a couple of things straight?’ he ventured.

‘By all means,’ said Hoskins affably. ‘Go ahead.’

‘I didn’t murder Maurice Cooper.’

‘No,’ agreed Hoskins. ‘I know that.’

‘And I didn’t kill those two men on the pier.’

‘Of course you didn’t. I did.’

‘You did?! You killed two men?’

‘Had to, old chap. To save your skin. One of them was about to shoot you.’

‘Oh. Then I’m very grateful.’

‘To be honest, I didn’t actually kill the second blighter. I just scared him a bit, and he jumped. Hadn’t studied his tide-tables.’

‘Well, thanks anyway.’

‘No need for thanks, dear boy, it was all in the line of duty. We’re relying on you for vital information. Couldn’t afford to let those scruffs rub you out.’

‘Hm,’ said Adam ruefully. ‘Those three this afternoon nearly managed it.’

‘No,’ said Hoskins. ‘They want information from you too. They weren’t going to kill you in a hurry.’

‘Never mind the hurry, they’d have killed me in the end.’

‘They weren’t going to get the chance. We’d have pulled you out after an hour. I had a commando unit standing by at Laindon Barracks.’

‘Good God!’ said Adam.

‘You’re a very lucky young man, a protected species. British Intelligence has been watching over you ever since the Jefferson inquest.’

‘You mean you’ve been following me?’

‘I, or one of my colleagues.’

‘All the time?’

‘We lost you twice, but we quickly got back on track by following Jane Hart.’

‘Just a minute.’ Adam’s voice changed from surprise to resentment. ‘If you had people standing by, you were ahead of me. You must have known I was coming to Chalksea today.’

‘Yes, of course. We’ve been tapping the man Dudley’s phone since we knew you were staying there. We had to put up with some awful jokes but we heard your conversation with Dean.’

‘So you watched me walk into a trap! You let those bastards get me!’

‘Steady on, old chap. We didn’t know for sure it was a trap, did we? Any more than you did. It could have been just the whisky deal, like you thought.’

‘So why the commandos?’

‘We suspected things might turn nasty. There have been rumours of East End gangsters using that hideout to rough up the opposition.’

‘But the place is supposed to be Home Guard property!’

‘There’s a link, I’m afraid. That’s something we’ll have to talk about in a minute. But first I have to ask some questions.’

‘So do I!’ protested Adam. ‘And this one won’t wait. When I didn’t come out with the whisky after five minutes, you must have known I was in trouble!’

‘That was a fair assumption, yes.’

‘And you were going to let them beat the hell out of me for an hour?’

‘It was necessary, dear boy. You might have picked up some useful gen. The interrogator often gives away more than his victim.’

Adam had to admit to himself that this had been his own line of reasoning. ‘As long as the victim lives to tell the tale,’ he said bitterly. He winced, and rubbed his side where a kick had landed.

Hoskins produced a silver flask from his pocket. ‘You still
look rather the worse for wear,’ he observed. ‘Knock back some of this and you might feel better. Then we can both put our cards on the table.’

Adam leaned back, put the flask to his lips, and swallowed a couple of mouthfuls. The brandy burned his dry throat but it sent a reviving charge of energy surging through his body. He closed his eyes and reviewed the events of the last hour.

As planned, the ambulance crew had done a good job of cleaning him up and tending cuts and bruises. Then they put the two men off at the station before returning to the firing range to look for further casualties.

Mid-afternoon passengers were still scarce on the Shoebury to London line and Hoskins had found an empty compartment on the first train.

Adam took another swig of brandy, sighed deeply, and handed the flask back to his companion. The pause had brought big questions storming to the front of his mind. ‘I don’t
understand
,’ he said. ‘The police seem to be searching for me, with their wanted notices, radio appeals and so on. But you say you knew where I was all along. So they could have arrested me at any time.’

Hoskins demurred with a smile. ‘Er, no. I said we in Intelligence knew where you were. I never said the police did.’

‘You mean you don’t tell the police what you know?’

‘Only when absolutely necessary.’

‘Is that fair? Those coppers were rushing to do everything you asked.’

‘They might not always do so, if they knew what we were up to. Don’t worry about the police, dear boy. We have an excellent relationship with the boys in blue, based on their doing a lot for us, and our not doing much for them.’

‘So why didn’t you want me arrested?’

‘Because you’d accidentally stumbled into a big conspiracy, a dangerous plot that threatens everyone in this country. We thought if we let you stumble on, you might blunder onto the truth. You see, we know the essence of this plot but we don’t
have the details. We hoped the plotters might come after you, and then we could nab them.’

‘So I was the goat in a tiger trap!’

‘Something like that. Well, you owed the nation a favour after pulling that stolen-identity trick.’

‘How did you know I wasn’t who I said I was?’

‘Easy. For you, getting away with it depended on no one bothering to ask questions. As soon as anyone took an interest in you, the truth was sure to come out. You couldn’t have accepted the Nobel Prize for Science, for instance.’

Adam wasn’t in the mood for flippancy. He said tersely, ‘I don’t think I was in the running.’

‘Anyway, once you turned up on our radar, we only had to run a few checks and we had the whole story. The Marine Research Unit told us you’d come from London University, and gave us your photograph. We showed it to a few folks at your old college and they all recalled you as Adam Carr.’

‘Oh well,’ said Adam. ‘It’s nice to be remembered.’

‘And there was no problem in finding out that you shared digs with the other Adam, and only one survived the bomb.’

‘I suppose you think that was a lousy thing to do.’

‘I don’t know all the circumstances. It certainly didn’t make any difference to the real Adam Webber. Or to the poor chap’s family, since they’d all gone before him. You broke the law pretty seriously, of course.’

‘I realize that.’

‘Which is a pretty good reason for you to co-operate with us now. When all this gets sorted out, you’re going to need friends.’