by Iain Colvin
‘He was a bit dittery but apart from that he was charming,’ said Lynn. ‘I liked him. He seemed like he genuinely wants to help.’
‘Yes, I know. But still.’
‘What?’
Craig couldn’t decide if his mind was playing tricks on him or not. His encounter with Blake had perhaps made him feel more wary. ‘Did it strike you as a bit strange that the professor’s words and figures differed?’
‘What does that mean?’
‘Sorry, it’s a banking analogy. It’s when we look to see if a cheque’s been made out properly. What I mean is that the professor was quick to dismiss the peace offer on the one hand, but on the other hand he’s very keen to see the document for himself.’
‘I didn’t read anything into that,’ said Lynn. ‘I think he wanted to set your expectations at a realistic level.’
‘Hmmm maybe. I saw his reaction to that second letter, though. I think he was genuinely surprised.’
They continued walking in silence, each deep in thought.
After a few minutes they reached the centre of town and came to the tourist information office. Lynn offered to go in and organise a couple of hotel rooms for the night. Craig walked around the block to kill some time and found himself outside a music shop. He’d always fancied himself as a bit of a guitarist. He stopped to look in the window and admire the collection of electric and acoustic guitars lined up. A thought suddenly came to him, and he went inside. He asked the man behind the counter if he sold sheet music.
‘Of course,’ said the man, and he showed Craig to a section in the back of the shop. ‘What are you looking for?’
‘Some old instrumental pieces, really whatever takes my interest. The older the better.’
‘Piano? Strings? Woodwind? Brass?’
‘Piano or strings. Or brass.’
The assistant pulled a face that said ‘I’ve got a right one here’ but he looked out a stack of sheets, sifting them into piles. Craig noticed some old jazz scores that seemed to date from the 1920s and 30s, and began looking through them.
‘How much for all of these?’ Craig picked up more than a dozen pieces of sheet music.
‘All of them?’
‘Yes.’
The man looked through the scores and sorted them into two small piles. ‘These ten sheets are £2 each and I can let you have the other six for £1.50 each.’
Craig mused. ‘What if I give you twenty-five for the lot?’
The assistant pursed his lips and looked at the old jazz music. Craig could tell he was weighing up the odds of whether or not another mug would be so keen to hand over so much cash for some long-forgotten ragtime tunes.
‘Deal,’ the assistant finally said.
They concluded their business and Craig left the shop with the music sheets safely in his inside jacket pocket. By the time he got back to the tourist information office Lynn had finished her own business and was waiting outside.
‘Where were you?’
‘Just round the block.’
‘I’ve got us in to a small two-star hotel near the station.’
‘Good,’ said Craig. ‘We can stop off at the left luggage lockers on the way.’
Chapter 30
Fiona’s lecture ended at one pm and she jumped on a bus into town a few minutes later. As it stopped and started along Great Western Road she gazed out of the window and wondered what Craig and Lynn were doing. Still on the train, no doubt. She realised that she hadn’t thought this much about Craig for a long time. Despite her better judgement she realised she enjoyed it. She liked the fact that he had come to her when he needed help, and she also liked seeing this new side to Craig, with the bit between his teeth. She snapped back to the present when she saw that the bus was coming up to Charing Cross. A short walk later and Fiona reached the Mitchell Library. She always looked forward to seeing the old Edwardian Baroque building with its colonnades and its domed roof. To her, the library was as iconic a Scottish landmark as Edinburgh Castle or the Forth Bridge.
She went inside and found the reference section. That’d be where she’d find the old newspapers from the period, she assumed. She went up to a desk to speak to one of the assistants, who gave her a card to fill out. Fiona decided that she’d check the Glasgow Herald for the whole of May and June 1941, and then for the period covering the Nuremberg war trials after the war. According to Craig that would cover Hess’s arrival and his next and only public appearance.
Once she’d filled it in, Fiona took her card up to the desk and handed it to the assistant. He disappeared for a few minutes. When she returned Fiona was surprised not to see any newspapers.
‘Here you are,’ he said. ‘We recently put most of our older papers on to microfiche. Have you used it before?’
‘I can’t say I have,’ admitted Fiona.
‘No problem, it’s all fairly straightforward. I’ll show you. This way.’ She followed the assistant as he walked through to a spacious room that formed the library’s main reading hall. He walked along a long line of tables, most of them occupied by people reading large books or writing notes. He came to a long table that had a row of what looked like TV monitors lined up facing the same number of chairs. He flicked a switch and spent a minute showing Fiona how to use the viewer.
‘You just place the fiche here and move this control. You can scan back and forward to the place you want. This knob here adjusts the focus.’
‘Got it, thanks.’
The assistant left her to it and Fiona settled down to her task. She pulled a pad and pen from her bag and began jotting down notes.
Three hours later Fiona finally put her pen down and rubbed her wrist. She must have looked through the best part of 200 newspapers and her eyes were as tired as her writing hand. She had learned a great deal about Hess from the articles written at the time, and a great deal that was puzzling to her. Plenty to tell Craig about in any case. She looked at her watch and decided it was time to make the train journey back through to Edinburgh. She switched off the machine and took the fiche back to the desk. The assistant from earlier had been replaced by an older woman, who took the pieces of plastic from Fiona and looked at the serial numbers on the sleeve. She found the corresponding ring binders and filed them away, initialling the index card on each. ‘That’s a coincidence,’ she said.
‘What is?’
‘Each one of these fiche were taken out on the same day nearly three weeks ago. Were you here before, looking at the same papers?’
‘No, I wasn’t,’ said Fiona. ‘That is weird.’ She thanked the assistant and made her way out of the front door, buttoning up her duffel coat. She crossed the road and walked down Bath Street. She thought about those microfiche all the way between the library and the station. By the time she bought her ticket at Queen Street she reached a conclusion: she’d just spent the afternoon following in Brian Irving’s footsteps.
After dinner that evening, Fiona filled her parents in on her day’s research. They listened with interest, happy that their daughter was back with them for the weekend. Shortly after 8:30, the telephone rang and Fiona jumped up to answer it after the first ring.
‘Hello?’
‘Hi Fi, it’s Craig. How’re things?’
‘Oh hi! Fine, everything’s fine thanks. I had a good afternoon in the library, I’ve just been telling Mum and Dad all about it. First things first: how did you and Lynn get on with Professor Prior?’
Craig sighed. ‘Hmmm, it went okay. He offered to help by contacting one of his Cambridge crowd who’s in the civil service.’
‘It sounds as if there’s a “but” coming?’
‘Kind of. Lynn thinks I’m either paranoid or I’m expecting too much from him. Perhaps she’s right. Maybe I’m a bit disappointed that he didn’t seem as excited as I was when I discovered the letters.’
‘What did he say when he read the peace offer?’
‘Em…’
‘What?’
‘I didn’t take it with me.
I put it into left luggage. I didn’t want a repeat of the Brian Irving fiasco. I wanted to meet him before deciding if he actually was the man to help me.’
‘Oh Craig! For heaven’s sake.’
‘I know, I know. I’m taking it with me tomorrow when we go back to see him.’
‘What was he like?’
‘He seemed nice to be fair. He had a big enough study in the middle of the college so he’s obviously well respected. He was very charming and polite. We’ll see what tomorrow brings. Anyway, tell me how you got on at the library.’
Fiona reached for her bag and dug out her notes. ‘Does the phone there take incoming calls? I can phone you back if you like?’
‘I don’t think it does take incoming calls, I’m on the pay phone in a small hotel not far from the station in Cambridge. But I’ve got plenty of change, enough for about ten minutes, anyway.’
Fiona told him what she’d found from the papers she read on microfiche.
‘I discovered some interesting details about Hess’s flight. The papers said that initially there was some doubt about Hess’s destination, but that it was later confirmed that he’d planned to land at Dungavel House. You know, the home of the Duke of Hamilton. Apparently there was a grass landing strip attached to the house that would have been suitable for a plane like Hess’s. It seems that Hess had planned to stay for no more than two days and fly back to Germany. He didn’t even have a change of clothes with him. Craig? Are you still there?’
‘Yeah, I’m listening. Carry on.’
‘Well, I found a strange coincidence about the night that Hess landed. If you remember, the Blitz had been going on from September of 1940 right through the winter and into the spring of 1941.’
‘Yes, that sounds about right.’
‘Okay. So, on the night of the 10th of May 1941, the night Hess landed, Hitler inflicted the largest bomber raid to date on London. The Luftwaffe ceased bombing raids on the UK immediately after that raid. Don’t you think that’s strange?’
Craig hadn’t registered the connection between those two events before. ‘God yeah, that seems to be too much of a coincidence now you mention it.’
‘Well that’s not all that was strange. I then went on to look at the Glasgow Herald’s coverage of the Nuremberg Trials. Not only was it the first time that Hess had been seen in public since the night he landed, but it was the first time he had been seen at all in the whole of that time. No photographs of him had been taken, or at least released, during his time in captivity. It was reported that he looked a shadow of his former self at the trial. The strange thing however is that at the trial, he didn’t recognise people he’d known closely for years, including Karl Haushofer and Hermann Goering, and he denied knowledge of things that he had been responsible for. What did the British do to him for those four years to make him act like that?’
‘It could have been a tactical ploy though,’ said Craig. ‘His defence was based on amnesia. I remember reading that he also refused to see his wife, and he refused to put his signature to anything, claiming that the allies were trying to trick him. Maybe he was trying to suggest that he had truly lost his mind in the hope that he’d escape the gallows.’
‘Or maybe he did lose his mind,’ said Fiona.
Fiona was about to go into more detail when the phone line interrupted them with a series of urgent high-pitched beeps.
‘Damn, there go the pips, I’m out of cash, hold on.’ Craig fished in his pocket and found three 2p pieces which he quickly put in the phone’s coin slot. ‘I’ve only got 6p so I just wanted to say thanks before I go.’
‘It’s okay. Quick, listen. I think Brian Irving looked at the same papers as me, three weeks ago.’
‘Really? That means we…’ but the pips cut him off then the phone line went dead. ‘Must be on the same track,’ he finished.
Fiona put the phone down and put her notepad back in her bag. ‘They better have separate bedrooms,’ she thought. Then she realised how that would sound if she were to say it out loud and she laughed to herself.
‘What are you laughing at?’ asked Valerie.
‘That’s for me to know and you to find out,’ replied Fiona.
‘I hate when you’ve got that look on your face,’ said her mum.
Fiona smiled and gave her a hug.
Chapter 31
Friday 18th March, 1983
Craig knocked on Lynn’s door just before 8:30 and they went down to breakfast together. The small breakfast room had six tables and fellow breakfasters were sitting at two of them eating bacon, sausage and eggs. A young waitress showed them to a table and took their order, then disappeared through a swing door and reappeared two minutes later carrying a pot of tea and a pot of coffee for their table. Craig and Lynn talked about what they should do that morning and agreed that Craig should lie low at the hotel just in case his photograph had made the English papers. Lynn suggested that in that case they should arrange to stay for one more night so that the hotel owners wouldn’t look for them to vacate by check-out time.
‘It’s very good of you to pay for our digs, Lynn. I’ll pay you back as soon as this is all cleared up,’ said Craig.
‘Oh don’t mention it,’ said Lynn with a dismissive wave of her hand. ‘Anyway, it’s an interesting break from routine, and it’ll do no harm for me to add a Cambridge professor to my list of contacts.’
The waitress brought Craig his sausage, bacon and eggs and Lynn her scrambled egg on toast, and they ate in silence. After finishing their drinks they went back to their rooms. Fifteen minutes later Lynn knocked on Craig’s door and told him that she was going out but she’d be back by eleven o’clock. She intended to look in on the Cambridge University Press seeing as she was in the neighbourhood.
Craig spent the morning reading the peace offer and preparing his newly purchased music sheets. He hoped they would turn out to be a waste of money but he justified the expense to himself – better to have them and not need them than to need them and not have them.
When Lynn had not appeared back by 11:40 Craig began to get worried. He put his things into his Adidas holdall, picked up his jacket and went out onto the landing. He locked his door and turned round to see Lynn coming up the stair.
‘Thank God,’ said Craig, ‘I thought something had happened.’
‘You are jumpy today! Sorry, I just got chatting with the folk at C.U.P. and, well, let’s just say if nothing else happens today my trip has been worth it.’ Lynn saw the look on Craig’s face and immediately regretted her choice of words.
‘Oh Craig, I didn’t mean it like that. Think positively, Professor Prior will come good today, I’m certain of it.’
She took her bedroom key out and unlocked her door.
‘I’m just going to freshen up for a minute, you wait for me downstairs. Take this.’ She produced a British Telecom phone card and handed it to Craig.
‘I thought it would save all that ferreting around for cash you usually do.’
Craig smiled. ‘Thanks Lynn, yes it will.’
Lynn went into her room and Craig went downstairs to sit in the hotel’s lounge/television room. It was the same size as the breakfast room, decorated with the same emulsioned-over Anaglypta wallpaper. There was no one else in the room and the television wasn’t on. Craig picked up a copy of the local newspaper from a low wooden coffee table and scanned the pages for any familiar names or pictures. Thankfully a murder story from north of the border hadn’t made it to this part of England, or if it had, it was old news by then. In a curious way, Craig felt sad about that, about the idea of Claire being old news. Yesterday’s news wrapping today’s fish and chips.
Lynn joined him and he snapped out of his thoughts. ‘All set?’ she asked. Craig saw that she’d applied fresh makeup and had done something with her hair. She’d put on a crisp white shirt with her jeans and even with the brown leather jacket she wore yesterday, Craig decided that she looked very professional. Maybe he should invest in some better gear to
o, he thought. One day perhaps, but not today.
‘Yep, all set. Shall we go?’ He picked up his bag and they set off, instinctively heading in the direction of the railway station and its banks of telephone kiosks. Lynn had made a good decision with the phone card because when they arrived at the station all the pay phones were occupied apart from two which didn’t take cash, just cards. Craig settled into one of the kiosks and took out the scrap of paper with Professor Prior’s number on it. He looked at his watch: two minutes to twelve.
Craig dialled the number and it was answered within two rings.
‘Hello?’
‘Good morning Professor, it’s Craig Dunlop.’
‘Oh dear boy, good morning, good morning,’ replied the professor. ‘I was hoping you’d ring nice and early.’
Craig felt a surge of excitement course through his veins. ‘That sounds promising, did you have any luck with your phone calls?’
‘Yes, yes, I managed to track down the chap I was looking for. I may have mentioned him, he’s in the Home Office. Very interested in your story. He’s coming down from London to see you, I’m expecting him any time this afternoon.’
‘That’s excellent news.’ Craig looked out at Lynn and gave her a thumbs up sign.
‘Can you come to my study?’ asked Clive Prior.
‘Of course, we’ll come along now if that’s convenient.’
‘Jolly good. And you have the document with you?’
‘Yes, I do.’
‘Good good. Well I’ll get the kettle on, see you and Mrs Simon shortly.’
Craig hung up, took the phone card out of the slot on the telephone unit, and stepped out of the phone box. Lynn walked over to join him. ‘Well?’
‘Professor Prior wants us to go straight over to see him. There’s a Home Office guy coming from London to speak to us. That would suggest that he’s taking it seriously. God bless Professor Prior, he must have sold the story well.’