Troubled Midnight (13 page)

“Leonard Cyril Partridge.” Curry supplied, “Known by his initials just to confuse folk. L C Partridge equals Elsie Partridge. Likes to be known as Len Partridge, a deeply secret man; been everywhere, spent time with MI5 and the Secret Intelligence Service, sat on the right hand of God in Special Operations Executive; all round good egg and won’t stand any fiddling from Tommy Livermore.”

“Really?” pleased.

“Yes, really. Elsie Partridge got out of Berlin in his socks in September ’39; interviewed Hitler under the guise of being a journalist for some imaginary far right magazine he invented. Called it Excalibur. Asked the Führer impertinent questions; says he’s full of himself, can’t understand why the people fall for the load of rubbish he feeds them, plays on the pure German race business. According to Partridge the real brains is the little club foot Goebbels.”

“Do I get to meet him?”

“Goebbels?”

She laughed, “No, Elsie Partridge you fool.”

“Watch it!” This time he did turn his head; looked straight at her, smiling. Lovely smile. “Beatable offence calling your senior officer a fool; and don’t let the gaffer hear you calling him Elsie. Bit touchy about Elsie.”

“When do I get to meet him?” she repeated.

“Sooner than you think.”

“When? And do I salute or anything?”

“Nice if you call him sir to start with, and you’ll meet him tonight if Tommy gets on with this. How is he with inquisitions?”

“Bit long winded. Calls them interviews, though – ‘officers from Scotland Yard are talking to a man who is helping with their inquiries’ – you know how it goes.”

“Yeees,” slow, drawn out. “We call that an inquisition, as in The Spanish, but we don’t use the Rack or the Iron Maiden. You an Iron Maiden, Suzie?”

“Not iron. More steel I suppose.”

“I had heard. Suzie Mountford, Steel Maiden.”

“Not even a maiden I’m afraid. Was once, back in days of yore.”

“Days of your what?”

“You’ve been watching too many Abbot and Costello flicks,” she said, grinning broadly, loving this kind of surrealist backchat.

“Who’s on first?” he asked, quoting from the comedy couple’s best-loved sketch, repeated almost in its entirety in pubs and school playgrounds: as well-known as the catchphrases of ITMA.

She chuckled.

After a minute or so he again asked about Tommy and his inquisitory techniques.

“He once said something very vulgar about questioning procedures, but then Tommy was/is vulgar.”

“He is?”

“Extremely. You should know, you were at school with him. Tommy never stopped being a vulgar little boy.”

“I wouldn’t have known that. School was only a couple of years. He was seventeen when I was fourteen. Those few years are an entire era when you’re that age. Gets better when you’re older, but I don’t think I could ever be on close terms with Tommy Livermore.” Another longish pause. “What was this particular vulgarity?”

“He said that the object of questioning a suspect was like getting to the far end of a fart. But then it’s one of my mum’s favourite expressions as well.”

Curry spluttered. “I don’t call that very vulgar. Not when put against some of the things you have to hear.”

“No, it’s not when you put it against what Tommy used to say and do. I lived with him, Curry. Well, just about lived with him from 1940 until recently.”

They drove on almost in silence and Suzie found herself leaning against the door, away from Curry. Are all men basically the same, full of cheap crudities? Sniggering at sex and body functions? She couldn’t believe they were all tarred with the same brush. All of them? Never.

She was wearing her severe dark blue suit, with the skirt a fraction too short, but over it she had the very military cut greatcoat, burgundy with little metal D-rings on the belt, like a trenchcoat and long skirts she could wrap around her thighs and legs. It was a coat that gave her tremendous confidence: the one her mum had bought for her at Fenwicks.

It was almost eleven-thirty when they arrived at the main gate of RAF Brize Norton, only they did not have gates beside the sold concrete Guard Room, they had a red and white striped pole, like you saw at some continental level crossings. An RAF Regiment sergeant, spiffy, and knowing it, in his blue beret and greatcoat, leaned down and talked to Tommy through the passenger side window. Curry stayed back, foot resting on the brake, gear in neutral and his eyes flicking up to the mirror, taking in the grey Wolseley to his rear with Dennis Free at the wheel.

“They’re not taking any chances,” he said as the sergeant hurried off into the Guard Room and an airman with a rifle watched the cars, some menace in his eyes put on especially for the occasion.

“Tommy hasn’t got the password for the day.” Suzie said.

“Betcha.”

“That the password?”

“No, but I bet you know it.”

“Haven’t a clue.”

“Piece of cake,” Curry chuckled.

Suzie said, “Advance piece of cake and be recognised,” and they both chuckled as the sergeant came doubling out and called for the red and white pole to be raised, then bent down again to give Tommy more instructions.

“Telling him where to go, giving him a map,” Curry muttered.

“I’d tell him where to go,” Suzie stated, entering into a conspiracy.

They followed Tommy’s Wolseley as it turned right and skirted past the more permanent buildings of the RAF station, the barracks, parade ground, officers’ mess backed by three big hangars, two old Armstrong Whitworth Whitley bombers and a big Short Stirling parked off the perimeter track, as were three Horsa gliders, while a twin-engined Oxford was coming in over the far hedges, the first aircraft to use the aerodrome that day, now that the fog had started to lift.

Beyond the hangars a cluster of more temporary buildings sprawled out towards the north – Nissen huts and larger prefabricated, wood and block structures, marking where the Glider Pilot Regiment’s Heavy Glider Conversion Unit was stationed. They threaded through the roadways until the Wolseley turned off to the left, stopping by a larger hut marked, above the door, HGCU sergeants’ mess.

Almost as soon as the cars came to a stop, an officer with Major’s crowns on his epaulettes, came out of the door followed by a warrant officer. Both had welcoming smiles plastered unconvincingly on their faces.

“Bet that’s Major ‘Shed’ Hutt and Sergeant Major ‘Kissme’ Hardy.” Curry already had the engine switched off and his door open, determined not to be left out so that Suzie had to leave the car in a sort of undignified flurry, gathering the skirts of her burgundy coat around her and almost trotting to keep up. The other car disgorged its passengers who had somehow pushed ahead – probably told by Tommy to thrust themselves forward: instructed to keep together.

They arrived at the small knot of police officers just as Tommy was doing the introductions. “Oh,” he sounded reluctant as he flapped a hand in the direction of Curry and Suzie, “These are two people from one of the Home Office Organisations.”

“Curry Shepherd, Major Shepherd,” Curry stepped forward, hand outstretched adding, “WOIL”.

Major Hutt said, “James Hutt, how d’ye do?” sounding like an old time squire up at the big house, rode with the hounds in winter, fished and blew game out of the sky for the rest of the year. “How’s that agin?” he asked referring to the WOIL.

“Jumble of letters to confuse the innocent,” Curry burbled, “and this is Woman Detective Inspector Mountford, on attachment to the Home Office.”

“Jolly good,” Hutt smiled, sounded perky, smoothed his little waxed moustache, allowed his eyebrows to lift while the grey eyes did an alarming twinkle meant to give the impression that he was a lonely bachelor who was no end of a dog. Aloud he said, “Sarn’t Major Hardy,” and the tall warrant officer leaned forward to go through the hand-shaking routine like his commanding officer before him. The sergeant major touched hands with everyone, smiled and spoke with a seriously wha-wha accent rarely heard except at point-to-point race meetings and in old country houses.

“Jaas, wawcome,” he said which Suzie translated as yes, welcome, then Major Hutt stepped in with something about hoping they’d all lunch in the officers’ mess, “When you’ve finished what you’ve got to do that is. Not going to take long, is it?”

Tommy took over with what Suzie thought was unseemly haste. “It’ll take as long as it takes.” Sour. “Ought to get cracking soon as possible, eh?” a splash of self-importance.

“I say,” said Jim Hutt, whom they called ‘Shed’ Suzie remembered. “I say. Aren’t you that copper whose always getting himself in the papers? Call you ‘Dandy Tom’ don’t they?”

Tommy didn’t like this, Suzie could tell because the colour came out, high on his cheeks. Dandy Tom, the papers called him because of the sharp, almost Edwardian, cut of his suits and the manner in which he approached murder cases. Tommy Livermore loved his colleagues seeing him talked about in the papers as Dandy Tom, but he didn’t like it so much when what he referred to as ‘civilians’ called him by the nickname.

Suzie saw Curry Shepherd give a little leer and knew he was aware of the joke.

Inside, the hut was laid out like a club, a small place just for men to come and enjoy themselves: tables and chairs dotted around, a bar to the left, steering its way out of the wall then turning and running down the room, backed by shelves with bottles and beer pumps nearest the customers. A tall grizzled man stood behind the bar, ready to serve drinks.

“That’s Pop,” Major Hutt said with a big smile and Suzie saw Tommy nod at the barman as though he was doing everyone a great favour by acknowledging him. Pop gave a little smile, quick and far from humorous or friendly. Suzie thought, ‘Hallo, that’s an old friend. Been in more nicks than a notch. Probably done some bird as well for he had that shifty way of looking at the assembled police officers.’

Looking round, Suzie saw that as well as Major Hutt and Sergeant Major Hardy there were two other officers, both captains, three pips on their shoulders plus four sergeants, among whom Monkey Gibbon grinned, drawing attention to himself. She tried to put names to the NCOs but, of course, couldn’t until Hutt started to do the honours. The small, chubby Captain was Puxley, “Branwell, but the chaps call me ‘Bomber’”.

“Why would that be Captain Puxley?” Tommy, officious and unsmiling. Puxley, from the look of him was the oldest present, late thirties, maybe even forty.

“Spent some time in the RAF. Flew bombers, well doubt if you’d call them such today. Flew Heyfords damned great things, big biplanes, two huge engines, three Lewis guns, loads of bombs. Handley Page Heyfords, last of the biplane bombers. Bit outdated nowadays.”

Suzie realised that Captain Puxley wore RAF pilot’s wings on his khaki battledress, not the crown and wings of the army and glider pilots.

“And I suppose your people were stuck on the Brontë family.” Tommy looking pleased with himself because he had recognised the name Branwell, the only Brontë male sibling. “Right,” he raised his voice, having been told by Major Hutt that they would be doing the interviews in the small room next to the dining room, through a door at the far end of the building. Out of deference to the acting CO’s name Tommy refrained from calling it a hut. “Right, let me just explain what all this is about.”

They listened politely as he gave them almost the same spiel as he had given back in the Wantage nick: first people they always spoke to after a murder were the family. “You are Colonel Weaving’s family to all intents and purposes,” Suzie had to admit that he was good in this kind of situation. A pompous prune, possibly, but a good prune, gently easing things along. “We’re all aware of how you feel. We know about loss of a leader, seen it before, dealt with it on several occasions,” he went on. “We are sensitive to your bereavement; conscious of how you must feel; you all worked with Colonel Weaving over a lengthy period…” Heads nodded across the room and there were murmurs of agreement.

“So,” Tommy ended, “let’s get these little interviews over as quickly as we can, then you’ll all be able to get back to the vital work you’re doing here.” He nodded and looked round.

“He’s good at all that,” Suzie told Curry later. “When he talks to a dozen or so people he ends up looking around and actually having eye contact with every one of them. Got it off an actor, he told me; actor who used that trick when taking his bow, taking a curtain call.”

Tommy gestured towards the door that led into the room at the rear. “Why don’t you be the first, Major Hutt? Do you good, get it over with. Few questions, nothing difficult.” He signalled to Dennis, flicking his hands, getting Dennis, Ron, Cathy, Curry and Suzie to pull chairs around a centrally placed table while he dragged what looked to be the hardest and most uncomfortable chair in the room to a spot in front of the table. The chair didn’t look too safe with a broken back, a small seat and one leg obviously shorter than the others.

Suzie remembered him talking, teaching her about interview technique. “Always get your suspect at a disadvantage: put him on a stool, or the most uncomfortable chair you can find, and put it in the worst possible place – in a draft, in the sun on a hot day – but make certain he or she is totally discombobulated.”

She didn’t even know it was a real word until she heard Tommy use it: discombobulated.

Now, suddenly they were off into the inquisition, no warning, no preamble, just Major Hutt sitting there, too big for the rickety chair, Tommy, Cathy, Ron Worrall, Curry and Suzie behind the table.

“Major Hutt, been on leave I gather?” Tommy said with a smile.

Like the smile on the face of the tiger.

Chapter Nine

SHE HAD TO admit Tommy was good at the question and answer routine: incisive, pauses in all the right places, immaculate timing. Tommy’s teaching on pauses was that you could elicit an answer to an unasked question by just saying nothing, pausing for longer that usual. He also said you should watch the suspect’s hands:
Tension or movement in the hands often reveals more than the answers to your questions.
That was one of Livermore’s rules of interviewing.