The King's Prerogative

by Iain Colvin

  ***

  Two miles away Blake answered a telephone.

  ‘Hello, Detective Wilson?’

  ‘Speaking.’

  ‘It’s Lorraine Johnston from Strathclyde University. You asked me to give you a ring if anyone should contact the office looking for Doctor Irving?’

  ‘Yes, thank you for calling. Has someone asked for him?’

  ‘Yes, a Craig Dunlop called a few minutes ago. He said that Doctor Irving was doing something for him.’

  ‘Is that all?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Did he leave an address or say where he was?’

  ‘No, but he left a phone number in case Doctor Irving got in touch. It’s a Glasgow number, 276 5963.’

  ‘Thank you Miss Johnston. And please call me again if this Craig Dunlop or anyone else contacts you.’

  Blake replaced the receiver, picked up his car keys and went out into the grey Glasgow drizzle.

  Chapter 18

  It was just after nine o’clock when Craig and Fiona crossed a bustling Byres Road heading for the subway station. Their first stop was a chemist where Craig bought himself a toothbrush and toothpaste. When they reached Hillhead subway station, they descended the steps and arrived at a crowded platform. They’d missed the bulk of the morning rush hour but the platform was still busy. They only had to wait for a couple of minutes before the train arrived. The beauty of the Glasgow underground was that it ran in one circular loop, with the trains travelling either clockwise on what was known as the Outer Circle, or anti-clockwise on the Inner Circle. This was a handy arrangement if you were new to the city or were a bit worse for wear from the night before. As long as you stood at the correct platform you were guaranteed to get on the right train, and even if you caught the train heading in the opposite direction you’d eventually get to your destination, albeit later than intended. As it was, Craig and Fiona boarded the Outer Circle train and four stops later they emerged at Buchanan Street and two minutes after that they were in the queue at the ticket office at Queen Street railway station.

  Fiona dug around in her bag for her young person’s railcard and Craig realised that he didn’t have his with him so he had to pay full fare. He paid for both tickets and they went out on to the concourse.

  ‘We’ve just missed a train so the next one’s in twenty-five minutes, do you fancy some breakfast?’ asked Craig, and Fiona looked at him like he was a half-wit.

  ‘You’ve had breakfast.’

  ‘Eh, no, I’ve had half a slice of toast and two sips of tea.’ So Craig bought himself a bacon cheeseburger from a fast food stall called Casey Jones. He was always amused by the name, due to the fact that any time he’d frequented it in the past he’d usually been a-steamin’ and a-rollin’. He felt very different this morning. He bought two coffees and gave one to Fiona, and they headed to the platform. The train was already sitting there so they got on and found a free table.

  ‘You seem to be in a good mood this morning,’ said Fiona.

  Craig did feel a lot better and it dawned on him that the main reason was that he was spending time with Fiona again. ‘I suppose I am,’ he said.

  Fiona reached over and touched his hand. ‘It sounds as if you’ve had a tough couple of weeks.’

  Craig nodded. Since Claire’s murder he felt that he’d been carrying a burden by himself. Maybe the build-up of pressure was the reason he’d reacted the way he had when the policeman brought things to a head. Who knows. But this morning he felt a sense of relief because Fiona had taken a share of the load from his shoulders, and now they were on their way to meet someone else who might be able to help. Even if it didn’t lead to them finding Brian Irving, Craig felt that he wasn’t on his own any longer and in a strange way that would make it easier when the time came to face the police.

  Outside on the platform a guard blew a whistle and the train moved off. It would take just shy of an hour to get through to Edinburgh so they settled in for the journey.

  ‘Do you go home much these days?’ asked Craig.

  ‘Usually once or twice a month,’ said Fiona. ‘Mainly to see my mum and dad and Robert.’ Robert was her younger brother. She studied him for a long moment. ‘How’s it been for you in Stranraer?’ She immediately realised it was an insensitive choice of words and she flushed slightly. ‘Sorry, sweetheart, I mean before all this happened.’

  Craig’s stomach flipped slightly at the mention of the pet name she used. He couldn’t look her in the eye. ‘It’s been fine, well, okay.’

  A heavy silence hung between them for a while. Craig eventually broke the tension.

  ‘As we’re on our way to Edinburgh, I have to ask – are you still putting salt and sauce on your chips?’ They both smiled. The question was in reference to the great divide in Scottish society. The default condiments used by Glasgow fish and chip shops were salt and vinegar. Travel forty miles to Edinburgh in the east however and the same supper would be smothered in salt and brown sauce. After several years of visiting football grounds across central Scotland, Craig discovered that the tipping point of this continental divide was Linlithgow, where, if you didn’t declare a preference, they put all three on your chips.

  ‘Oh, I’m still an Edinburgh girl at heart,’ smiled Fiona.

  The train rattled on, stopping at Falkirk High and Polmont stations. Craig could see the aluminium crown of St Michael’s church as they approached Linlithgow, and just behind it, the ruined palace. They hadn’t spoken for a few minutes and the silence between them became heavy once again. Craig searched for something else to say.

  ‘How do you know Lynn Simon?’ he asked eventually.

  ‘She’s been a friend of my mum’s since their schooldays,’ replied Fiona. ‘They used to go on holiday together when they were both in their twenties, backpacking through France and Spain on a shoestring budget. Lynn even fell in love with a French guy. In Nice. She was all set to stay there and they were going to grow vines and make wine.’

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘She wanted a career, so she moved back to Scotland.’

  ‘Shame.’

  ‘Not at all. Nicolas, that’s his name, followed her back, and they got married. Simon is actually See-mong but it’s easier for her to use the anglicised pronunciation for work.’

  ‘She sounds like quite a formidable lady.’

  ‘She is. I suppose you don’t become successful in a career like journalism if you’re a shrinking violet.’

  The train was approaching the suburbs of Edinburgh. As Craig stared out of the window they passed a square brick building with Jenner’s Depository written on it in large white letters, they then skirted Murrayfield Stadium before the train slowed down through some marshalling yards and drew into Haymarket station. A slow five minutes later and they were walking along the platform at Waverley. Craig realised that he hadn’t been in Edinburgh for a long time and he thought back to the weekends he’d enjoyed here with Fiona, and the week long training courses he’d attended at the staff college in the south side of the city.

  They climbed the Waverley Steps onto Princes Street, with the impressive old North British Hotel on their right and the equally impressive Scott Monument on their left. It felt several degrees colder on Princes Street than it did on Byres Road and Craig buttoned his jacket against the stiff breeze that whistled round the corner of the large sandstone hotel. They crossed the busy shopping street, dodging a maroon and cream double decker bus that was advertising the new Robert de Niro film, The King of Comedy. Hill Street ran parallel to the main New Town thoroughfares of Princes Street and George Street, and Craig and Fiona reached the offices of Hamilton Dunbar on foot without too much trouble. The receptionist showed them straight up to Lynn Simon’s office where Lynn greeted Fiona with a kiss, Fiona introduced Craig, and Lynn introduced them both to David Halliday. Lynn invited them to sit round a small table in one corner of the office and she waited for Craig to speak. Craig took out the wallet and opened it on the table. He reache
d inside, pulled out the photocopy and turned it round so that it faced Lynn.

  ‘This is the letter I told you about on the phone. Brian Irving has the original.’

  Fiona read the letter, and pursed her lips as she breathed out in a quiet whistle. ‘I can see why this might have caught Doctor Irving’s attention.’

  ‘He was far from convinced initially, and because it’s all gone quiet I don’t know if he’s convinced at all.’

  ‘You know what the implications of this letter are?’

  ‘I think so. The main implication is that Hess’s flight was arranged in advance. The letter might have been part of a sting operation by the British intelligence services. On the other hand, there might actually have been people here who wanted Britain to make peace with Germany.’

  ‘And do you know which angle Brian Irving was approaching it from?’

  ‘Well first and foremost he wanted to try to find out if the letter was genuine.’

  ‘Hmmmmm, quite,’ mused Lynn. ‘If it was me, I know which would be the more straightforward path to explore.’

  ‘What would that be?’ asked Craig.

  ‘My first port of call would be MI5.’

  ‘Really? You can do that?’

  ‘Why not? They’re not ex-directory. The trick would be to find a way in, through the right contact. Otherwise they’d be likely to deny all knowledge and stonewall your enquiry.’

  ‘Do you know the right contact? You said you might know a man who could help.’

  ‘I’ll come back to that, but first I want to understand more about your discussion with Brian.’ She retraced the steps in her mind. ‘In principle I think it would be easier to try to get confirmation that there was an MI5 or MI6 operation. There should be records in existence even if they’re still under wraps. It’s unlikely you’d be able to see any records but you might get confirmation from the civil service that there was an operation of some kind at the time. Is that an angle that Brian would have followed do you think?’

  ‘Brian didn’t seem to think there was a sting operation, mainly because Britain hushed up the whole affair afterwards.’

  ‘That’s a fair point.’ said Lynn. ‘How much do you know about the night that Hess landed?’

  ‘A fair amount, not least because of what my grandfather told me.’

  ‘And did your grandfather tell you about the curious anomalies in procedure that night?’

  ‘Anomalies?’

  Lynn retrieved a box file from her desk. ‘I wrote an article a few years back for The Scotsman. It was shortly after the Duke of Hamilton died, so the article was a retrospective about his life and the lasting impact on him of the Hess affair. I’ve spent the last couple of hours refreshing my memory.’

  She opened the file and handed Craig a newspaper article that took up almost the whole of a broadsheet page. Craig read it and handed it to Fiona who did the same. When she finished she handed the article back and Lynn folded it and put it back into the box file.

  Lynn restarted the conversation. ‘Weird isn’t it? The Duke of Hamilton was in charge of Scotland’s air defences at the time, and yet the RAF didn’t make a huge effort to intercept Hess’s plane even though it had been picked up on radar and identified as German. But it’s the breaches in regulations that are the most astonishing.’

  ‘Definitely,’ agreed Craig. ‘I hadn’t appreciated that as a captured airman, Hess, or Horn as he called himself, should have been interrogated by the local RAF intelligence officer as soon as he landed, as a matter of standard procedure. But both he and his commanding officer decided to wait until the next morning before getting involved. The pilot could have had vital information about that night’s intended bombing raids.’

  ‘And who was that RAF intelligence man’s commanding officer?’ asked Lynn, rhetorically. ‘It was the Duke of Hamilton. You could view it as a serious breach of operational procedure, or you could view it as deliberate negligence.’

  ‘Very strange when you put it together with the fact that Hess specifically asked to be taken to the Duke,’ said Craig.

  Lynn tapped the table with a fingernail. ‘But there was an even more blatant breach of security about that night,’ she said. ‘And it makes me think that Hess was expected.’

  Chapter 19

  ‘It’s not in my article,’ Lynn continued, ‘although I did make a note about it at the time. On the night Hess arrived, more than one radar station on the east coast had identified the plane as a Messerschmitt 110.’

  ‘And the RAF didn’t manage to shoot it down,’ said Fiona.

  ‘That in itself wasn’t so unusual, to be honest. It was a single plane after all. Flying fast in pitch darkness.’

  ‘What then?’

  ‘How many crew normally flew in a Messerschmitt 110?’

  Craig suddenly realised where Lynn was heading. ‘Two. They seated two.’

  ‘Correct. But there was no search for a second airman.’

  ‘Why not?’ asked Fiona.

  ‘Because Hess told his captors that he was alone,’ said Lynn.

  ‘And they believed him?’ asked Fiona.

  ‘It would appear so. It seems incredible that there was no search for a second parachutist. The officers at the scene were happy to take Hauptmann Alfred Horn’s word that he was alone and unarmed. Even though you might expect a captured pilot to say that, to give his comrade the best chance of escape.’

  ‘Bloody hell,’ said Craig. ‘Why has that never occurred to me before? A second airman could have posed a serious threat to security, but there was no obvious search conducted and no mention of a body in the wreckage.’

  ‘But they wouldn’t search for anyone else if they knew Hess was coming alone,’ said David.

  ‘Whoever “they” were,’ said Craig.

  A silence hovered over the table. David was the first to break it.

  ‘I realise I’m coming to this late, but didn’t Britain and Germany both say that Hess was mad? Maybe we’re overthinking this and it really is as simple as that. There was no peace initiative and there was no intelligence operation to entice Hess over to Britain.’

  Craig and Lynn looked at David and then gave each other a look that said ‘Will you tell him or will I?’ Craig took the initiative. He was glad of the chance to test out his thinking and see if it might coincide with Lynn’s. He turned to David. ‘When there had been no word from Hess after a couple of days, the Germans assumed that he had been captured. It was Hitler who broke the news to the world. He gave a broadcast on German radio telling the nation that Hess was suffering from a mental disorder and was having hallucinations. Hitler announced that Hess had set off on a flight from Augsburg in Bavaria, had not returned and it was assumed he’d jumped out of his plane or had met with an accident.’

  ‘It was Hitler who broke the news, not the British?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘Was that not a bit strange? Wouldn’t it have been extremely embarrassing for Hitler?’

  ‘It was the lesser of two evils. When it became apparent that the plan had failed, Hitler had to maintain plausible deniability. He had to keep Stalin off the scent.’

  ‘The scent of what?’ asked David.

  ‘Hitler was playing a game of misdirection. He was planning an attack on the Soviet Union but wanted to make it look like he was still planning an invasion of Britain.’

  ‘But he was planning an invasion of Britain,’ said David. ‘Wasn’t it called Operation Sea Lion?’

  Craig shook his head. ‘No he wasn’t. He wanted it to look like he was. I’ve read everything I can get my hands on. He never committed anything like the resources needed to launch an attack on Britain. In fact, he didn’t actually want a war with Britain at all. Even during the battle for France, Hitler gave Britain every chance to walk away.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘You’ve heard about the miracle of Dunkirk?

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Well in truth the fact that thousands of Britis
h soldiers managed to escape from under the Germans’ noses wasn’t all that much of a miracle. The only reason it was allowed to happen was because Hitler gave direct orders for all German forces to hold their position for three days. The orders were even sent uncoded and were picked up by the British. Hitler’s generals were astounded.’

  ‘Why would he do that?’

  ‘He was certain that Britain would want to make peace and he viewed the escape of the British Expeditionary Force as a gesture that would allow the UK to have “peace with honour”.’

  ‘That’s crazy.’

  ‘It might seem crazy in retrospect but think about it from Hitler’s perspective at the time. After the Munich Agreement Hitler was sure that Britain didn’t want war. He didn’t think Britain would stand up for Poland, and was surprised when Chamberlain did declare war. But if you look at events afterwards, Britain did next to nothing when Poland was attacked. The Phoney War lasted the best part of nine months. All the evidence in front of him encouraged Hitler to think that Britain’s heart wasn’t in a war. He was convinced that all Britain was looking for was a means of securing peace without losing face.’

  ‘He got that one seriously wrong,’ said David.

  ‘He did. And there was one main reason why he miscalculated Britain’s mood.’

  ‘Which was?’

  ‘Chamberlain was no longer Prime Minister. Churchill became Prime Minister on the 10th of May 1940. Dunkirk happened a fortnight later.’

  David thought for a few seconds. ‘But why would Hitler want peace with Britain? He’d already flattened half of Europe by that time.’

  ‘Because in Hitler’s vision of a new world order he saw the British Empire as a necessary counterpoint to the spread of communism. It’s in Mein Kampf. It was always his intention to push eastwards into Russia.’

  ‘But Germany and the Soviet Union were allies at the start of the war.’

  ‘Yes, but that was only a necessary expediency on the part of the Soviet Union to buy time. In the year leading up to the invasion of Poland, Stalin was worried that Britain and France were trying to provoke a German–Soviet war. You have to remember that at the time both the British and French governments believed that a strong Germany would actually be desirable because it would provide a buffer against Soviet expansion. Stalin had offered Britain and France a defence pact in early 1939 but they were both lukewarm about it to say the least. So Stalin took matters into his own hands and signed the non-aggression pact with Germany to buy his country time to prepare for the war he was sure would happen. It was always Hitler’s intention to attack the Soviets.’