An American Spy

by An American Spy (retail) (epub)

  Once again she struggled with the man’s motives; a soldier of rank, obviously well connected on the civilian side, takes on the persona of a private soldier to finagle his way into a grimy English prison. Where was the sense in that? She thought about what Dundee had said about his old schoolmate. Danby didn’t need money, that was clear enough, so what was it?

  She remembered a boy named Teddy McSeveney in fourth grade. Teddy’s father was the manager of the local bank and there were any number of stories of how he used that power, holding it over the people who needed his help and, more importantly if the rumours were true, how he used that power over those people’s wives. Teddy had taken a page from his father’s book, threatening to tell the school principal that one girl or another had stolen money from his desk unless the girl went with him into the cloakroom. It worked well enough until the young bully made the mistake of choosing Jane as a victim. Jane had gone to the cloakroom with the squat, fat-faced boy all right and, once there, proceeded to kick the shins out from under him, then sat on his chest and punched him senseless. Teddy had gone wailing to the principal, who proceeded to give Jane ten whacks with his cane, but Teddy had ceased preying on young girls from that day forth. Jane had taken away the one thing Teddy cherished most of all, just like his father: power. So if that was Charles Danby’s objective, what form would power take in a place like this?

  They stepped out into what had once been the women’s wing of Shepton Mallet, on the second level. It was almost identical to the men’s wing but half its size. It was also deafeningly silent.

  ‘There hasn’t been anyone in these cells for almost forty years,’ said Johnson, trotting out over the metal walkway that circled the tier. ‘Fortunate for us.’ At the far corner of the walkway Jane saw an open caged elevator that had obviously been recently installed. The cell block was also much more brightly lit than the men’s side and there were guards at each level, armed with wire-stock machine guns.

  ‘The guards always there?’

  ‘Day and night.’

  Johnson reached a cell with a metal number plate identifying it as number 17, reached into his jacket and withdrew an old-fashioned key and inserted it in the massive lock. He unhooked a hanging work lamp from the wall beside the door, turned it on and shone it inside the cell. Instead of a bunk and toilet the room was packed from floor to ceiling with drab cardboard boxes, each with a pencilled number. The numbers ran consecutively and in order from bottom to top, showing which ones had been stored first. Jane could see that boxes numbered 1790 and 1791 had gone missing from roughly the centre of the wall. The rest of the boxes had sagged in to fill the space.

  ‘So our stolen items were in those boxes,’ said Jane

  ‘Correct,’ said Johnson.

  ‘Valuable?’ asked Dundee.

  ‘You could say so. Some would say invaluable.’

  ‘What were they?’ asked Jane.

  ‘The Crown Jewels of England.’

  Chapter Eleven

  ‘I beg your pardon?’ said Dundee, staring at the little man.

  ‘Well, not all of them. Specifically the Imperial Crown, the one worn for coronations, and a sword, the Great Sword, which is the one the king would hand over should he ever cede the country.’

  ‘Cede the country?’ said Jane

  ‘Surrender in time of war, that sort of thing,’ the little man said blandly.

  ‘That sort of thing,’ said Jane faintly.

  ‘You’re repeating yourself an awful lot, sweetheart,’ said DuMuth.

  ‘It’s a lot to swallow.’

  ‘Might I remind you that you’re also bound by the Official Secrets Act regarding this information,’ said Johnson.

  ‘We’re Americans,’ said DuMuth belligerently. ‘We’re not bound by anything of yours.’

  ‘He’s right,’ said Dundee. ‘Regarding British state secrets we’re bound by their laws.’ He stared into the cell, pale with the enormity of what Danby had done. ‘Part of the agreement when we joined forces,’ he added.

  Johnson beamed. ‘Quite right,’ he said.

  ‘We know how he got in,’ said Jane. ‘How did he get out with the Imperial Crown and a sword?’ She looked around. ‘It doesn’t seem possible, especially with the guards.’

  ‘Well, palpably he did,’ said Johnson. ‘Seeing that the items in question are no longer here.’

  ‘Come with me,’ said DuMuth. ‘I want to show you something.’

  Like any institution built over a long period of time each era had new and different needs. In its earliest incarnation, Shepton Mallet had no heating system at all and the basement area was used for the storage of food and dry good supplies. Later an early coal heating system was installed, requiring coal tips and areas for vents and blowers. Eventually gas lighting required fixtures and new installation of equipment and by the 1930s the basement was a rabbit warren of overlapping and intersecting rooms and passageways underlying the prison, some of the passages ending in dead ends and others meandering one way and another with no particular rhyme or reason.

  At the lowest point in the basement the main sewage line opened up into an underground river that had been the original sewage outlet when the prison was built. Over the years it had been enclosed: first with timber, then with clay tile and finally with brick. The brick had begun deteriorating in the early 1920s and eventually collapsed in several strategic spots directly under the warden’s residence, necessitating serious repair work, this time with concrete.

  Leaving Johnson to mourn the loss of the jewels, DuMuth led Dundee and Jane into what were literally the bowels of the prison. Stooping under a section of old staircase, they peered into a large jagged hole in a section of rotted concrete, aided by the flickering light of the warden’s Zippo. The smell wafting up from the hole was easily ten times worse than the smell in the prison itself. Jane wondered if DuMuth was wise in using his lighter.

  ‘A month before Danby showed up here there was a break-in at a local contractor’s, Penby and Sons. Penby was one of the companies that bid on the job here. They didn’t get the job but they filed plans with their bid.’

  ‘And the plans were stolen?’ asked Dundee.

  ‘The police didn’t discover that until we made the connection. The plans were obviously used to find the spot where the underground river came up into the basement at an accessible spot.’

  ‘Where does it come out?’

  ‘It joins another stream on the far side of town.’

  ‘That’s how they got in?’ asked Dundee.

  DuMuth shook his head. ‘That’s what we thought at first but there was no sign that anyone had tampered with the grille. We kept looking and found a hole in the concrete casing fifty feet from the outlet and a tunnel that led into the basement of a cottage on a lane next to the stream. Pretty smart really; they could come and go as they pleased and no one knew anything was going on.’

  ‘You looked through the cottage?’ asked Jane.

  The warden gave her a withering look. ‘Of course, Miss Todd. And we didn’t find a damn thing.’

  ‘We’d still like to take a look if you don’t mind,’ said Dundee.

  ‘We went over the place thoroughly. So did Scotland Yard and that guy Occleshaw and his bunch. Nobody came up with anything.’

  ‘We’d still like to take a look.’

  ‘Suit yourself.’ DuMuth shrugged. ‘Take the jeep if you want; just remember to bring it back when you’re done.’ He waved them off. ‘Selkirk will tell you where to go.’

  * * *

  ‘Not the friendliest man I’ve ever met,’ said Jane as they stepped out of the prison a few moments later. It was still raining hard and they ran to the jeep, standing in the yard a few feet away, Dundee climbing behind the wheel and Jane getting in beside him. Dundee punched the starter button and the engine coughed and caught. He crunched the gears and they drove out of the prison.

  ‘It’s all bluff and bluster,’ said Dundee as they followed Selkirk’s directions o
ut of town. ‘DuMuth is in big trouble and he knows it. He was responsible for letting Danby into the prison as much as for his escaping from it. That’s bad enough but letting him walk out with the crown jewels is enough to get him busted back to the motorcycle corps. At best it’s going to make him the butt of a whole lot of bad jokes.’

  ‘I doubt it,’ said Jane, shaking her head. ‘Everyone is going to want this kept quiet. Even the Brits. You might see DuMuth reprimanded but that’s about it.’ She laughed. ‘I just think he doesn’t like seeing women in uniform.’

  ‘Foolish man.’ Dundee grinned.

  The cottage turned out to be on the southern edge of town, only a short distance from the train station where Selkirk had picked them up. It was the only dwelling on the lane and completely isolated, both by its location and by a tall bramble hedge of blackberries that screened it from view. As they pulled up in front of the cottage the rain stopped and the sun made a valiant attempt to break out from behind the bruised and sultry clouds. Jane took out her Leica and took a few rapid shots of the low-roofed little house. ‘Pretty,’ she said.

  ‘I just realised, we don’t have a key,’ said Dundee.

  ‘Probably don’t need one from the looks of it,’ said Jane. She stepped forward and tried the latch and the door swung open. ‘This isn’t New York or Los Angeles, after all.’

  ‘That’s a mistake a lot of people make,’ answered Dundee. They ducked under the low door frame and stepped into the cottage. ‘This being a case in point.’

  ‘I guess you’re right.’

  The house was made up of two small rooms and a bath. The main area inside the door was a combination kitchen-living-sitting room, furnished plainly in simple country furniture that all looked old enough to be called antique. There were several amateurish-looking landscapes in oil hung on the walls for decoration but nothing of a personal nature at all. The fireplace mantel was bare and so was the small table by the door. The small bedroom at the rear was equally barren and there was actually an accumulation of dust on the quilted bedcover. There were no towels, toothbrushes or anything else in the bathroom that might have belonged to the occupant. The cottage was as featureless as it was possible to make it.

  ‘According to Selkirk it was rented over the phone and paid for three months in advance by mail.’ Dundee pursed his lips thoughtfully. ‘Happens quite regularly, according to the estate agent who handles it. People going on holiday calling from London. That kind of thing.’

  ‘No name or mailing address I suppose.’

  ‘No.’

  The door to the basement was in the hallway between the main room and the rear bedroom although, on inspection, it barely qualified as a basement at all.

  ‘More like a root cellar,’ said Dundee.

  They peered around in the gloom, the only illumination coming from the spill of light from the stairway. They were standing in a musty, brick-lined room about ten feet on a side with an earth floor and the beams of the cottage floor less than six feet overhead, causing Dundee to stoop a little. In one corner the bricks had been smashed out of the wall, probably with the pick that was still lying beside a mound of earth piled to one side of the gaping hole torn in the wall of the cellar.

  ‘How many do you think?’ said Jane.

  Dundee approached the hole in the wall, his nose wrinkling at the smell. On the floor there were dozens of cigarette butts ground into the dirt. Dundee got down on his haunches and sifted through them slowly. ‘Players, Senior Service and Luckies. At least three people, then.’

  ‘The Luckies. One of them American?’

  ‘Or with access to an American Army PX,’ Dundee answered, standing and almost cracking his head against a beam. Jane reached out a hand to steady him and as her hand touched his shoulder she felt a jolt of something almost physical in the pit of her stomach. She backed away a little at the unexpected sensation and felt her cheeks flush.

  Dundee appeared not to notice anything, which angered her as much as the sudden feeling of attraction; the last thing she needed or wanted right now was involvement with this man, no matter how good-looking he was, but the least he could do was feel attracted to her. Which was ridiculous; if anything she should be pleased that it was one-sided but somehow that irritated her even more. In the space of a few seconds the whole thing had gone from the sublime to the ridiculous. She bit down on the inside of her lip hard and forced the whole silly thing out of her mind.

  As she backed up, she glanced down and saw something poking up out of the dirt floor. She bent down and dug a little with her fingers.

  ‘Got something?’ said Dundee.

  ‘Maybe,’ she responded. The object came free. A matchbook.

  CURTISS & SONS REMOVALS

  Fountainbridge

  Glasgow

  She handed it to Dundee, this time being careful not to let her fingers brush his. He glanced down at the damp, dirt-streaked paper folder. He opened it. There were still a dozen or more unstruck matches.

  ‘Smart crew,’ said Dundee. ‘It’s a ruse.’ He shrugged and handed it back. There were some words scratched onto the inside of the matchbook with a pencil, almost too faint to see.

  Salem/h.t. 712/12

  ‘What do you think it means?’ asked Jane.

  ‘Nothing,’ said Dundee ‘It’s been left for us to find, a feint, to send us off on a wild goose chase. Why would you throw away a matchbook with matches still left in it?’

  ‘Maybe one of them dropped it by accident.’

  ‘Doubtful. They’re meticulous about everything else except a single matchbook? No, take my word for it; these gonifs are doing a plant. Bristol is less than a hundred miles away; that’s the more likely escape route. A coastal steamer, even a fishing boat, could take you anywhere, north or south. Even across the Channel from Europe to Ireland for that matter. A neutral country. Not some obscure place in Scotland.’ He tossed the matchbook onto the floor again, then turned and went back up the stairs again. Jane bent down and retrieved the square of cardboard, wiping it off and slipping it into the pocket of her uniform jacket. She followed Dundee back up into the daylight.

  They went over the cottage again but there really was nothing out of the ordinary and Jane knew the second look was really nothing more than a formality for Dundee’s report to his boss at JAG headquarters in Charlton House. When he was done they went outside again.

  ‘Well, that’s that. I’ve done my job,’ said Dundee. ‘Maybe now I can get out of this dreary place.’

  ‘And I’m supposed to sit on the biggest story in the war so far,’ said Jane. ‘It’s not fair.’

  They climbed back into the jeep. Dundee took a last look around. ‘It stinks,’ he said quietly.

  ‘What?’

  ‘The whole thing.’ Dundee leaned back in his seat and lit a cigarette, staring blankly out through the windscreen. ‘Occleshaw, the visit here, that matchbook cover. The tunnel.’ The lawyer shook his head. ‘I’m being led around like a bull with a ring through his nose and I don’t much like it.’ He paused. ‘And I still don’t see how they got away with it; a dozen guards within sight of that room. It’s impossible.’

  ‘No it’s not,’ said Jane. ‘He did it.’ She smiled. ‘You’re pissed off because he’s smarter than you?’

  ‘That’ll be the day.’

  ‘Let’s start at the beginning,’ said Jane. ‘What about Occleshaw, other than the fact that he’s a horse’s ass?’

  ‘From the dates I was given, he was onto me within twenty-four hours of the robbery and Charlie’s escape from Shepton Mallet. Why? How could he have found out about my relationship with Danby that quickly and what difference would it make? It’s not as though we were the best of friends or anything. Plenty of people knew him as well as I did.’

  ‘But you’re here and you’re a cop,’ said Jane. ‘It makes a bit of a difference.’

  ‘It still doesn’t answer the question. How did Occleshaw know about me? I doubt that it’s in my jacket.’
r />   ‘Jacket?’

  ‘Personnel file.’

  He had a point. It was Jane’s turn to light up. She caught a movement out of the corner of her eye and spotted an elderly figure climbing out on the path, emerging from an almost invisible gap in the bramble hedge. He was wearing gumboots and a worn old sweater and carrying a fishing creel and a bait fishing rod. He had a face like an old tree root, a gnarled pipe sticking out of the centre of it. He saw Jane, gave her a polite nod and crossed the road behind the jeep, then went down the path that led to the river, the same path she and Dundee had used to inspect the grille.

  ‘Do you think he’s a plant too?’ Jane asked, throwing her leg over the side of the jeep.

  ‘Why?’ said Dundee.

  ‘Because if he fishes there every day, maybe he saw something.’

  She went after the old man, Dundee close behind her. They found him on a stump at river’s edge, about twenty yards from the prison sewer grille. His name was Gaffney and, as it turned out, he was a retired prison guard who lived in another cottage nearby. They also learned in quick order that the ‘fookin’ sausage eaters couldn’t be trusted, pardon-my-French-Miss, I fought in the first one. What does the price of butter have to do with fighting a war and it’s eels I fish for; best eels in Sussex out of this stream, I thinks they’re particular about shit, adds a richness to the water like.’

  ‘Know anything about the people who just rented the cottage up there?’

  ‘The ones that let old Maggie’s place?’

  Jane didn’t know how old Maggie had to be to qualify as old to Gaffney but she nodded anyway.

  ‘Aye.’ Gaffney bobbed his head, the pipe stuck precariously in the corner of his mouth, almost defying gravity.

  ‘Remember anything?’ asked Dundee.

  ‘Aye.’

  ‘Such as?’

  Gaffney finally took the pipe out of his mouth. He made a thoroughly revolting sound somewhere deep under the frayed old sweater that covered his sunken chest and spat something equally ugly into the sluggishly flowing stream beside him. Then he spoke.