The Night Raids

by Jim Kelly

  ‘We’ve not found Lucifer,’ said Swift. ‘But I think it’s second prize.’ He grinned. ‘At Byron’s Pool, sir. I’ll meet you there?’

  And then he was gone, slim shoes slipping into their racing brackets, the gears whirring as he sped south.

  Brooke, circling the shouts and splashes below the tree, set off in pursuit.

  Around a bend was a stone bridge, and beyond it the first glimpse of the blue whale-backs of the chalk hills which led on towards Newmarket’s high downs. The stream narrowed, but deepened, and became colder and darker. After a few minutes he could hear the weir ahead, beyond which lay the pool. He recalled Claire’s report that students had started diving at the spot again, despite college rules which banned the sport. And he remembered his grandfather, who’d looked upon the poet’s time at the university with a jaundiced eye, insisting that the pool had thrived when he was an undergraduate, long before Byron’s regular visits made it famous.

  The weir, now within sight, was bypassed by a narrow channel provided for salmon and other fish, but it was too narrow and steep to swim, so he hauled himself out onto the towpath. Ahead he could see where swimmers were diving in, resurfacing with a whoop. The river widened here at the confluence with the Bourn Brook, and a wooden floating pontoon provided the perfect launch pad for revellers.

  On the far bank stood a uniformed police constable, the high collar and topcoat making him look hot and overdressed. Brooke dived back in and swam across. Byron’s Pool, like most of the swimming spots reserved along the river, was for men only, and costumes or shorts were not required – a rule which caused some minor scandal, because this stretch of the river, where it began to meet the countryside in earnest, was also popular with courting couples.

  Brooke, in the water, called out, ‘PC Clarke!’

  Clarke was on the Borough, and had been for the best part of thirty-five years. He made Edison look like a pup. His short hair was white, revealed as he removed his helmet and brushed a forearm across a sweaty forehead. Clarke’s record was unblemished by achievement or initiative.

  ‘They found this,’ he said, hauling up from the grass the dripping frame of a red bicycle. It was a BSA, a ladies’ bike, slightly battered. There was no certainty, but it might well be Peggy Wylde’s.

  Brooke pulled himself up onto the towpath, dripping. PC Clarke, no doubt relieved to see his inspector in shorts, saluted.

  Vin Speed arrived, carefully placing his machine against a fence post.

  ‘Joleyn Forbes – one of our men – is a keen diver,’ he explained. ‘He told us you get bikes in the river so we did a search, mainly under bridges. We were looking for the Lucifer, but they got this instead, and we’d all seen the description in the News. It was in the pit – thirty feet down with all the usual stuff.’

  ‘Reckon it’s the young girl’s, sir?’ asked Clarke.

  Out in the middle of the green pool, a diver surfaced, then three more.

  ‘Something else, Vin,’ shouted the first. Brooke was alarmed by the divers’ faces, which were quite clearly tinted blue, especially the lips. All of them were breathing rapidly, saturating their blood in oxygen, before returning to the depths.

  ‘For God’s sake be careful,’ said Vin.

  The diver took a theatrical final deep breath and plunged vertically down, followed by his three lieutenants, leaving a whirlpool in their wake on the surface.

  Brooke sat on the bank, starting to count, inserting the statutory pause after each numeral. At fifty he realised how dry his mouth had become. One or two other swimmers sat on the bank too, wrapped in towels, examining wristwatches with admiration. Vin had his feet in the river, swirling them about, but as the seconds ticked on he too became still, transfixed by the motionless pool, which here betrayed no current, the leaves on the surface idly circling.

  One of the swimmers, now back in shorts and pumps, had climbed a stunted willow to look down on the scene.

  ‘Here they come!’ he shouted.

  Strange shadows moved over the surface, and then the pool erupted as the divers arrived, gasping.

  Two of them had a rope, which they took to the bank. Vin and half a dozen helpers hauled hard, until something broke the surface.

  On the bank they pulled away some weed and what looked like discarded fishing tackle.

  Brooke would have been disappointed at yet another abandoned bike, but for the engraved shield on the haft:

  LUCIFER

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  Brooke ordered a malt whisky without ice, despite the waiter’s attempt to interest him in a small printed card listing the cocktails available at the University Arms. The bar itself, once resplendent beneath a coloured dome of glass in art deco swirls, had been reduced by the blackout to a shadow of itself. The hotel had been fined twice for breaching regulations, and had resorted to swathes of dark cloth and dimmed lights. There were three other customers: two elderly men in suits who looked like salesmen, and a woman on her own reading a book while sipping sherry, who Brooke took as a visiting academic, perhaps, with an aversion to college rooms.

  In peacetime the view was panoramic, embracing Parker’s Piece to the Donkey’s Common. Tonight, blind to the world outside, they could have been in a down-at-heel hotel bar in any British city. The all-clear had sounded at nine, less than an hour after the siren, without sight or sound of the enemy, but the excitement which had accompanied such a release in the early months of the war had dissipated, and now everyone was looking grey, and exhausted, and generally bad-tempered.

  Brooke checked his watch: he was on time. He sipped the malt.

  The discovery of the Lucifer and – almost certainly – Peggy Wylde’s bicycle seemed to confirm the emerging view of the crime at hand. Bruno and Peggy had fled, possibly on foot and then by train or car, dumping their bikes in the river. The act seemed symbolic, a little ritual of separation, perhaps, between one life and another. And it had certainly served to shroud their enterprise in mystery. However, it worried Brooke as well, because it seemed desperate and final.

  Brooke was about to order a second drink when a man came into the lobby and approached his table with brisk confidence.

  He introduced himself as Dr Harold Bannister, from the department of chemistry. He’d once had red hair, which had almost all gone, but left behind freckles and what looked like sensitive skin – blotchy and flushed.

  He sat down and snapped his fingers, a habit which Brooke had always found unbearable.

  Bannister ordered a whisky crush and pointedly asked for a straw.

  ‘Here’s to Grandcourt,’ he said, when the drink came, taking the straw out of his highball glass. ‘Good chap. I understand we have you to thank for that.’

  Brooke sipped his malt then set the tumbler down on the glass-top table with a crack. ‘Hardly. He’s his own man. But I wrote his reference, if that’s what you mean.’

  Bannister wasn’t listening. ‘We’re all doing government work now, of course. It has to make a contribution – that’s the lingo they like. I’ve got flat feet – couldn’t even get in the last lot. But as I say – the department has several projects in train to assist the Ministry of War, and the Ministry of Supply. My field is petrochemicals.’

  He took out of his pocket the small glass jar Brooke had given Grandcourt. ‘So this didn’t present too much of a problem once it got to my lab. It’s adulterated petrol. About one part kerosene to three parts commercial fuel.’

  Bannister picked up the straw, mixed his drink with it, swallowed the lot and ordered another. Brooke had taken against him, not because of his boorish behaviour, but because he represented perfectly an emerging class of men who worked vicariously for the state in shadowy, ill-defined roles.

  ‘What’s the point of adulterated petrol?’ said Brooke, sharply.

  ‘To make money on the black market,’ said Bannister. ‘You take vehicle fuel – which is rationed – and mix it with a lower-grade petrochemical. It’ll run an engine, but inefficientl
y, and it’ll probably damage it in the long run. But your profits go like that …’

  He indicated with his hand the trajectory of an aircraft on take-off.

  ‘We look at samples from all over the country. Almost always it’s kerosene that is mixed with commercial petrol, which is doled out to farmers and hauliers and police stations. It’s coloured red.

  ‘This stuff of yours is standard rationed petrol that you’d get from a pump – but effectively diluted. We’re beginning to see this much more often, especially in the big cities where there are so-called blackout gangs – they’re just the same old thugs, but they’ve got a new lease of life with the war on. They steal the petrol, then mix it, then flog it on.’

  A man in a dinner jacket had come into the bar. He sat at the piano, lifted the lid on the keys and began to play what Claire would have called ‘spooning music’.

  ‘How do they steal it?’ said Brooke.

  Bannister moved closer, taking up the straw. ‘Well – not on any scale, Brooke. The ration system is pretty tight. Securing a supply would be tricky.’

  The waiter had brought his fresh whisky crush. He took the straw and loudly sucked up a mouthful. The woman reading on her own looked up and coughed.

  ‘We’ve had outbreaks of syphoning in London, Glasgow, Sheffield, Portsmouth. But anyone can do it.’ He waved the straw. ‘Ancient invention, of course. The Egyptians used rye grass. Then some Yank invented this – made a fortune. The Yanks are good at that; they take science, and they make money. We could learn a lot, but making cash is a bit infra dig at Cambridge.

  ‘We think it’s uncouth. A dirty word. But I’ll tell you this, Brooke. The scientist who invented the plastic-covered straw sank a lot of the money into good works. Built modern flats for the poor workers at the factory. Toilets, running water, insulation – that kind of thing. If you don’t make it you can’t give it away – can you?’

  Brooke sensed they’d lost the point of the conversation.

  Bannister ordered his third drink, and Brooke joined him this time, thinking he may have misjudged him.

  ‘The only difficult bit is getting the flow to start,’ said Bannister, waving the straw. ‘You drop in a rubber hose, suck on the tube, once it’s running you’re in business. But it takes practice – otherwise you end up with a mouth full of chemicals. Dangerous chemicals.’

  ‘This is on the street?’

  ‘That’s it. The blackout’s perfect. We’ve got engineers looking at lockable caps. A one-way flow lock. But it’ll take time. There’s a war on; this isn’t the number one priority.’

  ‘How’d it get in the river, do you think?’ asked Brooke.

  Banister shrugged. ‘My guess is you’ve got an operation here in the city. They’ll just be kids – or the usual petty thieves, or anyone who’s short of a few bob.’

  Brooke thought of Bruno Zeri and his debts, and his dreams, and the flimsie petrol can in the pannier of the Lucifer. And he saw looting for what it often was: an opportunistic extension of burglary and theft.

  ‘To make it worthwhile you’d have to have a gang of them, syphoning and all that – but they’ll be supplying a central warehouse or store. They’ll add the kerosene and sell it on to a garage that’s ready to offer it under the counter. Or better still, sell it to an operator in another part of the country, because when the engines start to cough you don’t want to be available to take customer complaints. So best flog it miles away. No good trying to fleece regular customers because they’d soon spot the fuel was dodgy – backfiring, missing strokes, mechanical failures. So you need to offload it – a tanker full, a middleman, that kind of thing.’

  ‘A fence,’ said Brooke.

  ‘Exactly. Someone in what we coyly refer to as “supply”. Someone with contacts in the wider black market. Don’t think this is just kids and ruffians. The production, supply, distribution – that’s all organised.’

  The drink was affecting Bannister rapidly, and his voice had risen several decibels, so that when he said ‘black market’ the pianist stopped playing for a moment, before ploughing on.

  ‘The leak in the river is symptomatic,’ he said, leaning closer, switching to a stage whisper. ‘They had a case in Portsmouth. They were mixing the stuff up in an old brew house. Gallons of it washing about. They tried to pipe it into a tanker and lost half of it down the drains. That’s what I think you may have here, Inspector. Amateurs. But organised amateurs.’

  He picked a bit of tobacco off his lip. ‘Your problem – if I might say so – is that if they do establish a way of getting the stuff out into the black market, they’re here for the Duration. The other problem is that we’re seeing a proliferation of guns – you won’t need me to tell you why. Every Tom, Dick and Harry brought back a pistol from the Great War. They’re two a penny. The further you move up the supply chain the more likely it is you will encounter someone ready to use one. There’ve been casualties, Brooke. Fatalities. Be warned.’

  The fresh drink brought its own cloud of minty fumes. Brooke thought of a mouthful of petrol, and the dizzying gas, and the taste of the rubber pipe. He thought of a throat burning, and lips parched by evaporating fuel, and what it might do to your stomach.

  Bannister, expansive, produced a small cigar and lit up in a cloud. Then he stretched out his legs as if making himself comfortable for a long chat.

  But suddenly Brooke had somewhere to go.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  The night shift had just come on at the hospital and Brooke found Claire on Rainbow Ward, at the sister’s desk, the downlight illuminating an open file and a green cup in a green saucer. The fringe of her neat bob hung down and for a moment he thought she might be asleep, propped on one elbow, but when she looked up the cat-like eyes were wide, and at the sight of him widened still, with a smile. Brooke always felt that unexpected meetings told you a lot about people, that in the first half second the face revealed the truth. He thought she looked happy to see him.

  He pulled up a chair from beside a bed where a small child lay asleep on top of the covers.

  ‘I thought lights out was seven-thirty?’ he said, noting that several of the other children were reading by bedside lights: comics, newspapers, even a book, while one child sat on the edge of his neighbour’s bed playing chequers.

  ‘We’ve been getting the siren most nights; it brings its own routine. They’re bleary-eyed in the shelter but if they do sleep they’re wide awake by the time we get back to the ward. So why turn the lights off?’

  ‘The boys with the tummy upsets. Presumably they all got sent home?’

  Claire’s eyes expertly scanned the right-hand rank of beds.

  ‘Last bed on the right – he’s the last left. Much better – but he was ill, really ill. They reckon the chip-shop owner was mixing some concoction up because he couldn’t get the lard. Old Standish was in every three hours to listen to his chest – and the others. If the dodgy oil gets into the lungs it can present as pneumonia.’

  ‘And the Guildhall analysis?’

  ‘They didn’t bother. They said the shop owner’s up for a fine and they’ve carted off the “fat” to the sewage farm.’

  ‘Charming,’ said Brooke.

  Claire flicked through a file at her elbow. ‘Here it is. Albert Michael Smith – that’s your boy. Aged thirteen. Address in the Upper Town, just off Honey Hill.’

  A casual reading of the local paper would reveal that several of the defendants up in front of the local magistrates could claim addresses in the Upper Town, and especially off Honey Hill, a tenement warren whose demolition had only been postponed by the outbreak of war. Charles Dickens would have recognised the street, if not by sight then by smell.

  ‘I’d like a word with the boy. A private one. Will you trust me?’

  ‘That depends what you intend to do, Eden.’

  ‘A little bit of gentle persuasion. Have you got a stomach pump to hand, Sister Brooke?’

  The gastric lavage was not to hand, b
ut was eventually uncovered in the store cupboard. The application of the hose down the throat, and the removal of the stomach contents, was so unpleasant as to require an anaesthetic. Its clinical use was generally discouraged, unless the patient’s life was in danger from poison.

  Young Smith was awake, reading The Dandy, his head moving hypnotically from side to side as he followed the adventures of Korky the Cat, oblivious of Brooke’s presence in the ward until the curtained screen was run swiftly around the bed.

  Brooke asked a few questions about Korky while setting the stomach pump at the foot of the bed.

  Smith, Brooke judged, exhibited a certain amount of animal cunning in not enquiring into the purpose of the machine.

  ‘So you’re much better, lad. What do they call you – Albert?’

  He shook his head. ‘Bert.’

  ‘Bert it is. I’d try another chippy next time, eh?’

  Bert looked towards the ward’s double doors, perhaps contemplating avenues of escape.

  ‘There’s another possibility,’ said Brooke, sitting on the edge of the bed. ‘Maybe the chippy was dodgy, but maybe you got poisoned by something else?’

  Brooke took the rubber hose off the stomach pump. ‘Imagine you’ve got something like this, Bert. Bit of garden hose, say. It’s after dark – the siren’s gone off again – you creep out into the Upper Town and you find a car. Then you twist off the petrol cap, slip in the hose, give a good suck until you get petrol in your mouth, then switch the hose to a bucket. If you don’t know what you’re doing – or if you have to try too hard because you’ve only got little lungs – you get a mouthful of petrol and it goes down your throat. Or down the wrong way into your lungs. It burns your throat, and your lips.’

  The boy couldn’t stop himself drawing in his lower lip.

  ‘Which is a different story to the one you told, isn’t it?’