Troubled Midnight (18 page)

After about twenty minutes Curry returned to tell them the colonel had arranged a RAF staff car and driver to take them to London. A little cocky, Suzie thought, bit full of himself, showing off that he could handle a little thing like getting transport.

Tommy asked them both to sit down, wanted to tell them something: and began –

“What happened this afternoon … the shooting, then the car blowing up. Well, no accident, not even a warning. Someone wants the two of you dead. Curry, if you know something I don’t, for heaven’s sake tell me.” He paused, his eyes moving between Curry and Suzie, then settling on Curry who had remained standing.

“I only know what we’ve all worked out, Tom.”

“Listen,” Tommy took Curry by the shoulder and forced him to sit close to Suzie. “Listen to me. You’ve been shot at and almost blown to pieces, the pair of you. And you, young Shepherd, have been much too sanguine about it. Whoever’s doing this is dead serious about it. They’re not playing around. They mean to kill you.”

“I’m
not
sanguine.”

“You are bloody sanguine. Too sodding relaxed, Curry.”

“I’m about as relaxed as a bayonet, and Tommy it’s just a hint, an idea, a theory. I’ve already told you. COSSAC.”

“Well tell me again, young Shepherd. Lay it out.”

Curry looked at his feet, then told him what he’d already carefully laid out for him in Wantage: the connection between Tim Weaving and the biggest single secret in the United Kingdom. “You’d agree that the cellar in Portway House had the feel of a torture chamber?”

“Of course.”

“Then follow the logic, Tom.
You’re
the great detective.”

“You mean the next front? The invasion of Occupied Europe?”

“Give the man a toffee apple and a stick of rock. Exactly. What I said before, Tom. People who turn up at COSSAC a couple of times a week have their hearts, minds and every other bloody organ full of the details for the invasion. Planners at the War House have them as well, but they’re split up in little bits. Some know the exact landing places, some know the composition of the troops, others know the overall picture once a break-out’s confirmed. It’s a huge bloody operation. Naval specialists and RAF specialists; how the beaches are going to be supplied, and how petrol and ammunition can be brought over. Jerry would give his eye teeth for a few bits of it … Come to that old Rommel would give anything for details.”

“And you think some skulking spy beat Weaving to death trying to prise out some of the details?”

“Absolutely. I’ve already told you, Tommy.”

“And the woman, the woman in Portway House – Emily Bascombe – she was done away with just because she was there?”

“Naturally. What’s wrong with that?”

“You want to know what’s wrong with it?”

“Yes.”

“Too bloody melodramatic if you ask me. I mean it doesn’t take the brain of an Oxford geography don to work out that the most straightforward way is to assault France across the
Pas de Calais.
I suppose you land infantry along a front from where? ten-fifteen miles either side of Calais; bombard ’em from the sea and air, drop gliders and parachute troops a few miles inland, make a bridgehead and break out into France. That’s what I’d do.”

“Yea, but they’re not asking you, Tommy. There’s a shade more to it than that. The logistics are enormous.”

Suzie caught a glimpse of Curry’s face, the grey eyes were on fire as he continued. “I’m supposed to have my eye on the security of all those officers working things out down in St James’s Square. One of them goes under a bus, I’m unhappy. One of them dies being put to the question I’m bloody devastated.”

“Well…” Tommy Livermore sucked his teeth, obviously still unconvinced. “As an old policeman I tend to take a different view.”

“You mean you think a friend of Captain Robert Bascombe VC has come in, done for the wife’s lover then done for the wife. Dear Bobby, I did it all for you. Lots of love Tiger.”

“At the Yard,” Detective Chief Superintendent Livermore said slowly, and with a shade of pomp and circumstance, “At the Yard we tend to go for the domestic motive every time.”

From the doorway, Dennis Free signalled the staff car had arrived for Major Shepherd and Woman Detective Inspector Mountford. A WAAF corporal hung around the hall outside the ante-room, and a couple of RAF officers stood around, one of them a squadron leader, medium height, corn-coloured hair, a flourish of a moustache below a chiselled roman nose. A pilot, handsome with a clipboard and some kind of form that required Curry’s signature. The squadron leader grinned happily at Suzie and said they were all set to go now in a nice deep basso profundo voice that gave her a tiny sweep of goose pimples down the spine, but not for long. There and gone like a wink.

As they were leaving Tommy quietly said, “Three-oh.”

“What?”

“Calibre of the rounds we took out of the car and the mess wall. Point three-zero, which as like as not means it was an M1 Garand. American rifle.”

“Narrows it down then,” Curry with his hand on the doorknob, grinned broadly. “These days a man can hardly walk the length of his own shadow without tripping over a Yank. So it really narrows it down.”

*   *   *

IT WAS A COUPLE of hours later that Sadler met Linnet in the public bar of The Eagle and Child in St Giles, Oxford. They had both changed into mufti: unusual because you did not easily change into civilian clothes, even off duty. This was how it was in wartime Britain. People had been known to look horrified at the sight of fit and able-bodied men out of uniform. In any case it was not the done thing: a member of HM Forces was, in the main, proud to be a fighting man or woman.

They sat together in the corner of the saloon bar sipping their weak beer and talking quietly. All the beer in England was pretty weak, it wasn’t simply the prerogative of the Bird and Baby, as countless undergraduates referred to The Eagle and Child.

“So what happened with the timer?” Sadler asked.

He could understand four rifle shots missing, but they had worked out the lump of plastique, the detonator and the fuse. Sadler had rung Linnet from the mess as the car pulled away taking Shepherd and Mountford over to the car park beside the sergeants’ mess.

They knew the drive took approximately three minutes. Make it five, giving them time to walk over to the vehicle. All Linnet had to do was set the timer for five minutes and dump the neat little bomb under the bonnet, using the magnetic clips, before the pair arrived. Plastique bombs were ten a penny at Airborne camps.

“They stopped,” Linnet said. “They bloody stopped to talk by the edge of the parking area. Stood chatting away as though they had all the time in the world. Then, boom! They were nowhere near it, the buggers.”

Sadler finished his beer and stared into the glass as though he could read something terrible in the dregs.

I am the prince of fools, he thought. Madness, all of it, and Tim Weaving had been the beginning. He should’ve remained in control instead of being so damned stupid. And the business on the aerodrome, what had that been about? The shooting and attempted bombing? Initially everything had started on an impulse.

They had been driving a mile or so following Tim Weaving and passing Portway House Linnet said, “He’s in there. Now, he’s in there.”

And he thought, why not? and bounded out of the jeep and bounced up the steps … one … two … three … fit and hale and hearty, lifting the heavy brass knocker and the door opened. There was Emily Bascombe, provocative, cocking her hip and wearing that interesting crooked smile, and – “Excuse me, madam, is Colonel Weaving here?”

Tim stepping into the hall from the right, from the front room, the drawing room if you thought you were as smart as that.

Tuesday 14
th
December, 1943. 11.30 in the evening.

Timmy not at all pleased but polite as ever.

“What d’you want?”

“A word, sir.”

“Better come in. All right Em?”

“Of course.”

Close the door behind you but leave it a smidgeon ajar. Nothing ostentatious, just around half-an-inch, then follow old Tim into the front room. The patterned carpet and stained polished border; luxurious blue velvet curtains, ceiling to floor, keeping the light in, well-lined; a three-piece suite covered in matching blue silk; a nest of tables; two standard lamps with cream shades; the picture over the mantelpiece, cows pausing in a rocky stream, behind them the hills, reeds and grass. Two other pictures, head of Erasmus and one pen and ink drawing of some Italian campanile rising from a huddle of buildings by a shoreline. Could be Switzerland not Italy. If not Como, then Magiorre or Lugano.

“Sit down —.” called him by his name. But Sadler didn’t sit.

“Well?” Tim Weaving asked, made no pretence that he was displeased, angry even, turning away as Sadler went through the curtains into the bay of the windows, signalled Linnet, turned and walked back.

Weaving now irritated, like someone with a head full of lice, “What the hell’re you doing? Are you drunk or something…? Mind that bloody blackout.”

Emily coming in, quite stunning in a green dress, narrow skirt, pinched waist and buttons down the bodice.

Tim Weaving turned back to Sadler just as he hit him with the ball of his fist, spun him then chopped hard in the back of his neck, put him down, out for the count.

Emily starting to scream but Linnet coming in behind her, right arm crooked around the throat, right hand on left bicep, left hand behind the head: you do not have to be strong to use the left hand to get purchase and the right forearm to subdue the throat. A quick death, very fast.

She was on the floor, lifeless by the time Sadler had the handcuffs on Tim Weaving. Always carried the handcuffs. Some ladies loved them. Got them from a Military Police sergeant when he was doing the EFTS and having a splendid ride round the park with a WAAF flight officer.

“Somewhere quiet,” he told Linnet sharp, commanding. Linnet found the cellar. Within the half hour the night had become troubled far beyond sanity.

“Mr Ling! Mr Ling!” the barman of the Bird and Baby, called at them, leaning forward. “The telephone call you were expecting, sir.”

Linnet disappeared behind the bar, hunched over the telephone, muttering.

“Beryl’s lost them,” he told Sadler when he returned. “Bloody lost them.”

Beryl was the name of the WAAF corporal who had driven Curry Shepherd and Suzie Mountford to London. Owed Linnet a favour.

Chapter Twelve

CURRY TOLD THE WAAF corporal to drop them in Piccadilly.

“Anywhere special, sir?” She asked, bright corporal Beryl Collins.

“Oh,” face screwed up, hesitant. “Oh, over there, near the Regent Palace Hotel.”

The blackout was more relaxed now, at the end of 1943, unless a warning sounded; certainly easier to drive at night with the glimmer lights in the streets.

Suzie’s head whipped round in the direction of the Regent Palace and she could see from here there were crowds of people about, the Piccadilly Commandos out in force, with plenty of customers, mainly Yanks. These prostitutes, some only enthusiastic amateurs, did a great trade with the Yanks who were more able to afford the girls than the British soldiers.

Her heart sank as the young corporal went round the Dilly and pulled up in front of the hotel. A sludge of memories filled her mind. A couple of years ago – ’41, just after the Americans came into the war – she was working undercover for Tommy, attached to the CID at West End Central police station.

She had come into the Regent Palace one day when trying to track down some villains who had gone AWOL from the army and were now doing odd building and decorating jobs. While there she bumped into an immensely attractive RAF Spitfire pilot, Wing Commander Fordham O’Dell, and had spent a night with him, believing that Tommy had been unfaithful to her. It was the only time she ever cheated on Tommy, but now, as they drew up outside the hotel the memories of that time were vivid,
son et lumier
in her head. There, two years ago, she was playing around with the idea of leaving Tommy, and now she had done it.

She wondered what had happened to Fordy O’Dell whom she’d first interviewed with his flight at Middle Wallop, just before Christmas 1940 when she was on her way to spend that terrible Christmas Day with her sister, Charlotte, in Hampshire. The Christmas when it all went wrong.

They climbed out of the car, a Humber painted matt RAF blue with a roundel on its offside front mudguard, and Curry signed the chit Beryl presented to him. “You can lose yourself ’til tomorrow morning, corporal,” he told her and the girl nodded unhappily, saluted and got back behind the wheel.

“Don’t go into the hotel,” he told Suzie, lowering his voice. “Get lost in the crowd up here,” nodding towards Sherwood Street, running alongside the hotel, taking her elbow and propelling her away from the entrance.

As she turned her head, Suzie was aware of the WAAF corporal fiddling around in the driving seat before starting the car again and slowly moving away.

“Into here,” Curry told her as they approached a doorway. “Hard against here, out of sight.”

“What’s up?”

“You didn’t notice?”

“Notice what?”

“That girl, the corporal driver.”

“What about her?”

“She was very interested in where we were going. I slowed you down to let her see we weren’t actually going into the hotel.”

“So?”

“I want to see if she comes looking for us.”

A few minutes later, as they stood silent in the doorway, watching tarts and their clients go by, Curry said, “There you go, she’s looking as if her life depends on it.” Sure enough the RAF Humber cruised past, the corporal’s head stretched forward, eyeballing the pavement, craning, trying to spot them.

“Well?” Suzie still puzzled, then seeing the problem. “You mean she was told to watch us? She’s searching for us because someone’s told her to?”

“That’s about the strength of it. I think we should have a word with her as soon as we get back to Brize.”

“We’re going back?”

“Oh, in due course, yes. We can’t really telephone ’cos we’ve no idea who may have asked the girl to pinpoint us, and I want to know who did the asking.”