The Night Raids
Page 8
‘We also contact Marshall’s and local RAF stations so they can try and put something up to make things difficult for the bombers. The barrage balloons are flying already, of course. They do a job – no doubts about that.’
Once the siren had sounded, explained Kohler, the local emergency services placed themselves on standby for a location to be released by the BCC. The city had six Observer Posts with trained operatives able to track incoming bombers and calculate bearing, speed and height. That information was ‘short-circuited’ direct to the ack-ack guns. Once a bomb fell, any of the recognised services could ring in the location, or they could rely on the Observer Corps again, as all the posts had direct landlines to the BCC.
‘Once we know what we’ve got on the ground we dispatch what we think they’ll need. Each of the services – fire, bomb disposal, ambulance – have their own dedicated telephone lines. And we’ve got six motorcycle messengers on duty at any time.’
Brooke surveyed the map of the city he knew so well.
‘You didn’t mention police,’ he said, smiling.
‘I’ll ring the Spinning House if there’s an issue – closing roads, keeping back the sightseers. It’s not a priority, I’ll grant you that. Once a bomb’s dropped your boys seem to be there within minutes anyway.’
Brooke nodded.
‘Anything else?’ asked Kohler.
Brooke shook his head.
‘Give me a minute,’ said Kohler, breaking off to chat briefly with the telephone operators and the radio man. After examining a telegraph tickertape, he picked up one of the phones and dialled a number.
Kohler raised his voice. ‘BCC here. Major Kohler. Today’s code word is “yellow”. You can sound the all-clear.’
The radio operator lit a cigarette and one of the girls stood up, stretching, and asked if anyone wanted a cup of tea.
Kohler headed for the doors, waving Brooke to follow.
They passed the guard and climbed up to the atrium, under the circular glass dome. The stars were brighter, but the silence profound, until they heard the thin wail of the Guildhall siren.
The sense of the space above them, big enough to accommodate a church, was oddly threatening.
Brooke put on his hat, adjusting it.
Kohler smiled, offering a silver cigarette case. ‘It’s alright, Eden. I’ve worked it out for myself. Nothing personal.’
Kohler lit his cigarette and jerked his head to one side to avoid the cloud of sulphur. ‘There’s a Russian fable about a man who goes to a museum – one just like this, I think. He notes all the details – every exhibit, every carefully inscribed note under every cabinet. Later he tells someone about his visit and when he’s finished his friend says, “What about the elephant?” He’d missed it, you see – a stuffed mammoth, in the middle of the main gallery.
‘Never overlook the obvious. That’s sound military intelligence. It’s likely, isn’t it, that our looter, or looters, our murderer, is in a uniform. ARP, WRVS, OC – the police, doctors, nurses. I think we’re telling them where to go, where the bomb’s struck. So you’re not here for help at all. You’re here to track down your man.’
Brooke nodded. ‘Sorry. I should have been straighter. You’re right; no one suspects a uniform. And it doesn’t have to be bona fide, of course. They might be fakes – it’s pretty easy to run up an arm band and paint a few letters on a tin hat.’
‘But dangerous,’ said Kohler. ‘What if you get challenged? ID cards make that kind of malarkey very risky. And why bother? We’re after volunteers. We pretty much take anyone.’
They smoked in silence, creating a column of grey fumes which rose up to the dome.
‘But what to do, Edmund?’ Brooke asked.
Kohler examined his polished boots, which reflected the dome above. ‘You’ve been to a bomb site, Eden. It’s chaos. The problem is that the priority is saving lives, not spotting opportunist thieves or charlatans.’
Brooke stepped closer. ‘If it’s possible I’d like a list of the volunteers we have on the street – auxiliary fire, wardens, messengers – the lot. Is that possible?’
‘I can try, Eden.’
‘And could you have a quiet word for me? Ask each of the services for help. You’ll know who to talk to. Tell them to keep an eye out for anyone suddenly spraying cash about. The woman on Earl Street had a stash, all cash apparently. Ask them to have a chat with those they trust. Is there anyone they don’t trust? If they’ve any suspicions just get me the name and the service. The Earl Street bomb in particular. There were all sorts there. Bomb disposal, regular army, WRVS. And yes, it might be a woman. With the men away, cash is short. Strangling an old woman already mortally wounded doesn’t require a lot of brute strength. Can you see what you can get? Also, anyone who travels to the scene by bike.’
Kohler stretched, head back, looking at the statues guarding the upper galleries.
He laughed. ‘Ironic, isn’t it? Here we are trying to track down murderous looters in a grand museum full of looted treasures: Egypt, Assyria, Babylon, Greece. “Collected”, of course, in the interests of academic enquiry, but often at the point of a sword or the barrel of a gun. But what’s the real difference, Eden?’
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
As Brooke threaded his way through the city, families were appearing from the underground shelters in the city centre, clutching baggage, hauling along children half awake, heading home. The siren had released them all from the dank basements below the Guildhall. No bombs had fallen, but the drone of RAF fighters up from Marshall airfield was oppressive, circling overhead. Despite the hour Brooke felt even sleepless rest was beyond him, especially as a further opportunity was at hand to track down his murderous thief.
Ducking down All Saints’ Passageway, he entered the maze of streets which had once constituted the city’s Jewish ghetto. As a child he’d memorised its twists and turns, courtyards and alleys, until he could find his way in the unlit, narrow, cobbled streets by touch alone. His route, Braille-like, led to the doors of Michaelhouse college – his alma mater – where he administered the now-standard coded knock with his signet ring: two raps, a pause, two raps. The lock on the small ‘Alice-in-Wonderland’ door, set within the great oak, turned smoothly.
Doric, the night porter, led the way into the lodge. Behind the counter and an array of pigeonholes was a panelled room, with a coke fire which never seemed to go out. On a griddle, a kettle steamed. The night was warm so Doric was in shirtsleeves, the cuffs held back by garters. On the hearth, three pairs of shoes lay waiting to be polished.
Doric was Brooke’s longest-serving nighthawk. When Brooke had got back to Cambridge in 1919 from the sanatorium in Scarborough, the condition of his eyes had ended his studies for a degree in natural sciences. Joining the Borough had offered some moral purpose, and an intellectual challenge, but first he’d had to endure a year on the beat in uniform. A kindly mentor, a senior detective, had at least secured him a night beat to protect him from the pain in his eyes. It had been a blessed relief. His disability – photophobia – was in danger of transmuting into heliophobia – an irrational fear of light. He needed a settled routine, a worthwhile job, and Claire’s support to keep the demons at bay.
Doric, an old acquaintance of his student days, had offered patient company and the unspoken sympathy of an old soldier. Privately Brooke had maintained his studies, and regular visits to the college allowed him to pick up the latest journals from his pigeonhole, kindly selected and rerouted by his former tutors.
‘Did you get a note?’ asked Brooke, taking a seat. He’d rung from the Spinning House before he’d gone for his swim, and left a message with one of the day porters.
Doric straightened his back, examining the room’s vast clock, upon which the daily routine of the college relied. It was ten minutes to ten o’clock. ‘He said he could make the hour, Mr Brooke. Burns the midnight oil, does Swift. He’ll be here.’
As a student, Brooke had often taken refuge in this room
, a kind of landlubber’s cabin, which provided an escape from the schoolboy japes of Formal Hall. He’d found the bread-throwing cacophony of the undergraduates unbearable. Instead, he had shared Doric’s supper, gleaned from leftovers and supplemented by any wine which had been opened but not drunk.
Tonight there was a plate of cold beef, some Dauphinois potatoes and a decent chunk of Stilton.
Doric set an opened bottle of Bordeaux on the hearth.
‘What’s afoot?’ he asked, standing with his back to the fire, bouncing on his toes. A veteran of the South African wars and various Indian skirmishes, he had formed a bond with Brooke which had rarely relied on extended conversation. They often shared a companionable silence, in which Brooke remained still, while Doric exhibited his usual restless routines.
He began to polish one of the shoes.
‘I need young Swift’s help,’ said Brooke. ‘He wanted something from me, and I said no. Now I want something from him, so I’m prepared to say yes.’
Doric spat on the toecap of the brogue. ‘What does he want?’
‘Immortality,’ said Brooke, tapping a Black Russian on the arm of the chair. ‘Or glory,’ he added. ‘It’s not uncommon, is it? The university is full of brilliant men. They wish to be successful, to carry off the glittering prizes. A place at the Cabinet table, or the bench at the Old Bailey. Or a bishop’s mitre. If they can’t get one of these treasures they make one up instead. It’s prizes for everyone.
‘There’s Byron’s Pool, of course. Dive to the bottom and recover a silver cup and you’re famous amongst your peers. Or the Great Court Run. Belt round Trinity’s courtyard in less than what? Forty-five seconds, or forty-four, or forty-three, and you’ll be lionised. An immortal, Doric. Just like Lord Burghley.’
Brooke had seen the feat. A crowd had gathered to see the annual race, held on the day before the matriculation dinner. The challenge had been set: to run 400 yards in the time it took for the college clock to chime midday. Brooke had always felt this was a cheat, because Trinity’s clock sounded the four quarters first, and then the hour twice – hitting a low note first, high second. And if they forgot to wind the clock it took even longer. And Brooke guessed – being a natural scientist – that the atmospheric pressure affected the delicate mechanism of the flywheel. So who really knew the time?
Doric slurped his wine. ‘Easier before the last war, a course. They started in a corner back then, so they only had to run round three corners. Now they start by the gate.’ He shook his head at the blind stupidity this revealed. ‘So they have to run round four. That’s what slows ’em down.’
‘Yes, but Burghley has his glittering prize,’ said Brooke. That day, with him cheering along, the young athlete had beaten the final chime. The first man to achieve the feat.
‘Young Swift wants his own such prize,’ said Brooke.
For half an hour Brooke read the porter’s evening paper and an article on the geology of Swaziland, while Doric produced a luminous shine on his black shoes.
When Vin Swift appeared he looked every inch the ‘captain’ he was: about five foot ten, Brooke judged, with a very small torso but extended limbs – great levers turning on fulcrums of cartilage and bone. His head was small and round, with his hair oiled back, so that it was difficult not to see it as deliberately aerodynamic. He stood before them in his college suit, shifting from narrow foot to foot.
Brooke cut to the chase. Vin Swift was captain of the Clarion Club, a cycling fraternity, originally springing from radical political roots in the 1930s. It had a reputation for mild disorder, its speeding peloton thundering through quiet villages or round the city’s parks. The year before it had applied to the Borough for permission to establish an annual race, loosely based on the Great Court Run. A route had been suggested, comprising the Backs, Trinity Street, King’s Parade and Silver Street Bridge. The time target was to be set by Great St Mary’s chimes, between the hour and quarter past.
‘The Clarion race,’ said Brooke. ‘There’s still interest?’
The official request, asking for the streets to be closed, had been turned down by the Borough. It had, in fact, been an intervention by the county force, based in the Castle, which had scuppered the project. A note had complained of the risk that ‘rowdy’ behaviour would lead to public disturbances. In a city with a long memory of violent disorder, the warning had won the day.
Brooke was sure he could get Carnegie-Brown’s approval for a change of heart.
Swift, who’d unfurled his limbs and slid onto a window seat, said the race was still an ambition, and they talked of it often, as the club was thriving, full of young men keen to be fit for service.
‘A lot of us are doing shorter degrees, starting early. So we’ve less time, but that just means you pack more in, make the most of it. And we let in townies, if they can ride, and if they train. So numbers are up.’
Brooke jettisoned the Black Russian into the embers of the coke.
‘We can let you have your race,’ he said. ‘No promises. Let’s just say the Borough’s behind you. But we need something from you. A quid pro quo. How many members in the Clarion?’
‘Sixty – a few more.’
‘How many bicycles in Cambridge?’
Swift shook his head, laughing. Doric, taking up position on the hearth, blew out his cheeks.
‘Ten thousand?’ offered Brooke. ‘A few more, a few less. I make that one keen Clarion man to every one hundred and fifty bikes. They’re not all on the street, of course. Not all the time. Hallways, college bike sheds, maybe, but mostly railings, walls, alleys. Factories too, thousands there, in bike sheds. At the station, too.’
Brooke stood. ‘I want you to find one bicycle, Mr Swift. But it’s a rare one.’
Edison had collected an advertising flyer from a new cycle shop at Mitcham’s Corner.
Vin studied it with a light in his eyes.
He turned out to be a minor expert on the brand. The Lucifer was sold in Paris, through a department store called Mestre & Blatge, which had an outlet in London. But the bike was rare. He’d never seen one in Cambridge.
‘Two hundred and fifteen francs,’ said Swift, nodding. ‘A nice machine.’
Brooke nodded. ‘This one isn’t brand new. In fact it’s battered – probably second-hand. It’s blue, and it’ll have that badge that’s on the flyer – the name, and the sunburst of light.’
Brooke felt a bolt of impatience. It was likely the killer didn’t yet know the bike had been spotted, but gossip, and the search, might raise the alarm. They had to act quickly and track it down.
‘If you find the bike, send someone to the Spinning House straight away,’ he said. ‘Don’t do anything else. Don’t approach the owner – but keep tabs. Find me Lucifer, Vin. Then you can have your moment of glory.’
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Helmut Bartel, and his one-time best man Walther Schmidt, stood outside the main hanger at Waren airfield, thirty miles north of Berlin. It was late evening, and the stars overhead stretched from the woods in the east to the woods in the west. The scent of damp pine needles was almost hypnotic. They smoked with little enthusiasm, cradling cups of chestnut coffee, contemplating the Heinkel, which was being serviced by the ground crew within the hangar, while connected to a fuel bowser – a tanker on tractor wheels – by a long snaking articulated pipe. The lights by which the men worked spilt out over the grass.
The Heinkel, up on blocks, had been scarred by its encounter with ack-ack fire over Cambridge two nights before. The dorsal fuselage was pitted with shot, and a charcoal-grey stain marked the area of the port wing that had briefly caught fire. Damaged fabric had been stripped from the fuselage frame to reveal the struts, a disturbing vision of the skeleton within, which looked impossibly fragile. They had returned at dawn, limping back, trailing smoke – and when the ground crew had got inside the aircraft they’d found Muller, the top gunner, dead in his harness, hanging like a pheasant or a partridge from a butcher’s hook.
A note had gone up in the mess after dinner informing them that the commandant would brief the crew at 20.30 hours.
Relaxed, even jovial, Bartel’s friend nevertheless now lived on his nerves like the rest of them. The Cambridge raid had sucked any sense of adventure from the crew. They’d been lucky to survive. Since their return there had been no leave, no communication at all with wives and families, and so the idea that they had in fact not returned, but were held in some forest purgatory, had enveloped them all in a gloomy lethargy. At night, at precisely this time, Bartel wondered whether his wife and daughters even knew if he was alive at all. Or did they imagine the Heinkel falling to earth, or arrowing into the grey waters of the German Ocean?
‘This tastes of ash and nothing else,’ said Bartel, throwing the stub of his cigarette to the ground with a look of self-disgust.
A bomb rack was approaching, towed by a tractor, and the ground crew had opened the doors of the ‘bathtub’ – the low-slung cabin through which the crew climbed aboard, and through which the payload would be winched into position behind the glass cockpit and the nose cone.
‘My money’s on tonight,’ said Schmidt, looking away, towards the dark forest. While they were all depressed by inaction, the idea of flying again made Bartel’s guts twist.
‘Perhaps,’ he said. ‘Let’s wait for the briefing. You know as well as I do, Walther, that it depends on the decisions of others, on the weather, on the target, but most of all on the much-lauded grand strategy.’
It was remarkable how quickly they had all become cynical about the abilities of the high command.