Touchstone Season One- Complete Box Set

by Andy Conway

  “Oh, but he is. You’ve just proved it to us, Miss Bond.”

  He gripped her arm and shoved her into the road.

  “Come on,” he hissed. “Lead the way.”

  — 34 —

  RACHEL TOOK A MOMENT to cast her eyes over Charlie’s bedroom, neat and orderly, almost Spartan. A dim light came through the window, and she thought for a moment how he’d opened the curtains, not wanting to put a light on, not wanting to sleep for long. A fat alarm clock ticked on the bedside table. He was lying on his bed, in uniform, still wearing his tie, his shoes kicked off and in a pile on the rug.

  “Charlie,” she said.

  He didn’t stir. She wondered if she should go and shake him. But Clifford still held her arm in a fierce grip.

  “We don’t have time for this,” he said. “Eckersley! Wake up!

  Charlie opened his eyes, instantly alert. He sprang up from the bed, surprised as he saw Rachel, then Clifford, then Clifford’s gun.

  “Lieutenant Charles Eckersley,” Clifford purred. “I am arresting you on suspicion of aiding and abetting an enemy of the realm.”

  “What the hell?” Charlie said, his eyes seeking hers. “Rachel?”

  She shook her head. “I’m sorry, Charlie.”

  “Put your shoes on,” Clifford said.

  Charlie eased over to the side of the bed and fumbled his shoes onto his feet.

  “Leave the gun,” said Clifford.

  His service revolver hung in its holster on the chair. Charlie nodded, stood to attention. Clifford waved him out with his pistol and shoved Rachel on after him into the lounge. For a brief moment, Charlie held her in a gentle embrace and glared back at Clifford with a look of hate.

  “Oh, that look shouldn’t be for me,” Clifford said. “You should save it for her.”

  Charlie looked from him to her. “What’s happened?”

  “She’s given up the spy that you were so desperate to protect. The Parker woman. I’m afraid that means suspicion falls on you too, old boy.”

  Rachel gripped herself deeper into Charlie’s embrace, burying her face into his shoulder, ashamed to look him in the eye. His grip weakened for a moment and she thought he might shove her away, but then he pulled her closer to him and stroked her hair.

  “Oh, Rachel,” he whispered.

  Disappointment, like a knife in her guts.

  “Take your coat,” said Clifford. “The plans are in there, and the contraption?”

  Charlie nodded and reached for the hat stand. Rachel pulled away and stared at the rug.

  Charlie threw on his cap and coat and they left the apartment, filing their way to the car that waited outside the church. Constable Davies opened the rear door, revealing Amy clutching Maddy to her breast.

  Charlie shot a look of venom. “You’re going to put a child in a cell?”

  “We’ll send for someone to take the child,” said Clifford. “A neighbour perhaps?”

  “Yes, my neighbour,” said Amy. “She sometimes looks after her.”

  “I’ll get Davies to see to it.”

  “Yes, sir,” said Davies, squirming with discomfort. He got out of the rear and took the driver’s seat.

  Clifford stepped in and slammed the door shut, leaving Rachel on the pavement. She realized she wasn’t arrested too. She was stranded.

  Through the open window, Clifford said, “Rachel, I’m calling an emergency meeting of the invasion committee. Tonight at six. My office. I’ll make sure everyone is informed. But as Mary Lewis is right there, do go and let her know. There’s a good girl.”

  She turned to see Mary Lewis standing at the top of the steps.

  The car sped off and she was alone.

  A terrible sickening dread flooded her soul, and her feet felt like they’d been cut off, but she somehow walked up the stone steps.

  Mary Lewis looked down on her, all ice.

  “Emergency meeting. At six. The police station.” If she said another word she would have to vomit it out all over Mary Lewis’s shoes.

  “What’s going on?”

  “It’s all a mistake.”

  “So that’s Amy Parker and Charlie Eckersley both arrested as spies. Well, I can’t say I’m all that surprised about her, she was always a rum one. But him?”

  “He’s done nothing.”

  “And how are you so sure? You’ve only been here five minutes. You don’t even know him.”

  “I just know.”

  “There’s something off about you too,” Mary growled. “You’ve fooled the others but I know I’ve seen you from somewhere before. When I remember, you’ll be for it.”

  Rachel turned and swayed down the steps, an overwhelming urge to fall and split her head open.

  And she was running.

  — 35 —

  RACHEL RAN ACROSS THE green and caught a tram heading to the city. Like a rolling Flatiron Building, she thought they couldn’t possibly stay upright if it wasn’t for the electric cables above, but she had seen the same design on the steam trams in history books, when there were no wires.

  Cramped inside. An old man gave his seat up for her and she wondered why. Women glowered and whispered their gossip. How did they know her shame? Perhaps they were Mary Lewis’s secret army of spies. One word from the old battleaxe would fly round the city, faster than the telegraph service.

  What if she just returned home right now – got off the tram, went back to the touchstone and left all this behind? How would it have changed because Danny died in 1940? Because Charlie died? Because Amy Parker died? Would those lives be worth it if her life was restored?

  No. She couldn’t leave Charlie like that.

  She’d thought about it for a despairing moment, standing on those steps, but Mary Lewis barring her way had seemed like a sign. Her great-great grandmother blocking off that coward’s way out.

  A poster above her. Careless Talk Costs Lives. A few stupid words could change the future, kill people. Her stupid words to Clifford had doomed Amy Parker, and Charlie, and Danny too. She was blundering around in the past, trying to fix it and creating even more of a mess.

  And she had no idea where she was going.

  The light had gone. Night had fallen. The bombers would come soon. Peering out, she saw the familiar shape of Balsall Heath Public Baths.

  She shot up and got off at the stop, running off the main road and down the slope to the streets of Highgate. An idea now. She knew where she was going.

  Spooky streets with only white-painted kerbs and lampposts to light the way. These were the streets she’d walked down with Danny in 1912, when they had followed Richard Parker to the pharmacy. The menacing gang of peakies on the street corner who looked like they were going to attack. She laughed at the irony of how much safer it felt now.

  How long before the bombs would fall?

  Here. Here was where it stood in her own time, though it was nothing but a row of terraced houses now. No single story red-brick junior school. But somewhere close by, surely. That’s why it would be named after him.

  The famous long-serving councillor who had never moved out of the area, who’d lived in the same house his whole life. A popular man of the people, who held a Christmas party at the Town Hall for a thousand underprivileged children every year.

  A woman rushing home, a basket on her arm.

  “Excuse me. I’m looking for Percy Shurmer. Does he live near here?”

  “Oh, the Miskin King?” the woman laughed. “He’s at Belgrave Road, number 40. You’re two streets off. Down there, left and then second left.”

  She walked on, quickening her step, and found it. A cramped end terrace house. Just as she went to knock the door, it opened and a woman stepped out saying, “Thank you.”

  The old woman showing her out smiled at Rachel, as if expecting her.

  “Come in, then,” she said. “He’s in the parlour.”

  She showed her inside and Rachel wasn’t sure why till she found Percy Shurmer sitting at a table with
a pad of paper, a scrawny middle-aged stick of a woman sat across from him clutching her handbag.

  “Ah, Miss Bond,” said Percy.

  “Sorry to barge in like this,” she stammered. “It’s urgent.”

  “Urgent business,” Percy smiled. “Right then. Let me finish here with Mrs Roberts and I’ll be right with you.”

  He indicated three wooden chairs sitting in a row against the back wall and she took a seat. This was his surgery, she realized.

  Mrs Roberts had a problem Rachel couldn’t quite work out. Something involving her children.

  “And what’s our MP Leo Amery done about it, eh?” said Percy. “Nothing, that’s what. It’s all very well making big speeches in the Commons about leadership. He wants to show a bit of leadership right here.”

  Rachel’s gaze wandered over the room. The furniture wasn’t like Charlie’s, which she now realized was a little elegant and Art Deco, betraying wealth and social status. This was the shabby 1930s interior of the working class. Tidy and clean, but functional.

  Percy said something about writing a credit note for a shop. The lady gripped Percy’s hand as she left. “Thank you so much, Mister Shurmer.”

  “Call me Percy.”

  “You don’t know what this means to me.”

  She left, sobbing with relief, and Percy turned to Rachel. “Kids in this part of town with no shoes,” he said. “In Britain, the richest country in the world. It’s a national disgrace.”

  This was his thing. The campaign he would carry on after the war, for years. Rachel wondered if she’d just witnessed the very moment the idea was born. He would raise a fund to provide poor children across the city with boots, and not provide it out of his own pocket.

  “Now then,” he said. “Something must be up for you to call on me like this.”

  She went over to sit at the table with him, another local with a complaint.

  “Chief Inspector Lees has called an emergency meeting of the...” she lowered her voice, “committee. At six. In his office.”

  She looked at the wall clock and so did Percy. Half an hour.

  “He’s called it? Not Charlie?”

  “Charlie’s been arrested.”

  “What?”

  “On suspicion of aiding and abetting a German spy.”

  “Are you kidding me? What a load of bloody nonsense. We’d better go.”

  He showed her to the hall where he threw on his raincoat and a homburg hat and they were rushing out of the door. He shouted a quick explanation to the old woman who’d shown her in. She didn’t seem surprised. This sort of thing must happen a lot.

  He walked fast for a short man. She was almost trotting to keep up with him, in her silly heels. She explained as they walked up to the Alcester Road and caught a tram back to Moseley.

  “This is just politics,” Percy wheedled. “That Lees fellow is staging a coup. That’s what this is, a blooming coup.”

  “Why would he do that, though?”

  “The same thing’s going on with the government. We’re all supposed to be in this together, but there are top Tories around Chamberlain who just won’t accept they got us into this mess. They’re still pursuing the same appeasement policies that gave Hitler all of Europe and they’re doing it behind Churchill’s back.”

  Rachel racked her brains for what she could remember about the composition of the wartime government. A national coalition of Conservative and Labour. Churchill had taken the leadership after Chamberlain had failed. After Dunkirk? Or was that Churchill’s first failure? Whatever it was, Churchill’s leadership must still be hanging in the balance. It seemed absurd when placed against what the history books said about him being the popular war leader, the whole country rallying behind him. How could anyone in his own government, his own party, be plotting against him?

  “Let’s not fool ourselves,” said Percy. “It’s not just a few cabinet ministers like Chamberlain and Halifax. They’re everywhere. People like Inspector bloody Lees and Mary Lewis are part of their secret army.”

  “I don’t think my... Mary Lewis is a Nazi sympathizer, Percy.”

  “Probably not outright. But their sort supported Hitler all through the thirties and they want this war stopped so we can be their allies. Us standing side by side with the Nazis, fighting Russia – that’s what they want.”

  That bit was true. Her great-great grandmother wasn’t waving a Swastika, but she would support the stormtroopers as they marched into Birmingham. She would think it put right a lot of what she thought was wrong with the world.

  Rachel had always thought the fight against fascism was all quite easy: they were an enemy far away or up in the sky. No one saw their faces as they dropped their bombs. But it wasn’t like that at all. They were right here beside you, whispering their hate in your ear. They were people you thought you knew, they were your family, people you loved, turning that love into hate.

  And they were inside you too. That rush to judgement you felt: to mistrust, to bully the weakest and blame them for all the ills of the world. They made you think you were being oppressed by people who had nothing. They made you hate the real victims. They made you run with the mob and think only of yourself.

  Nazism was a cancer. And you didn’t even know you had it till you were riddled with it and the real you, the best part of you, was already dead.

  The tram jolted to a stop in Moseley village and they got off, marching round the corner to Woodbridge Road. She could just make out the outline of the police station, white sandbags piled up outside, and realized they wouldn’t stop the bomb that was going to fall right on it some time tonight.

  She followed Percy through the door, trying not to think of how that bomb was already sitting in a German plane, flying across the channel.

  — 36 —

  PERCY MARCHED RIGHT up to the desk and banged his fist on it, making the desk sergeant jump.

  “I’m Councillor Shurmer and this is my assistant. I’m here to hereby invoke executive powers that allow me to see my constituent, currently residing in your cells.” He prodded the ledger on the counter. “Lieutenant Charles Eckersley. He’s right there.”

  Sergeant Webster glared with alarm.

  “Councillor Shurmer,” a voice called.

  Clifford came through from his office, smiling with benign arrogance.

  “You’re just in time. Do come through.”

  Sergeant Webster lifted the flap and they followed Clifford. Rachel noticed Constable Davies sitting at a desk, holding a mug of tea, glaring into space with silent fury.

  In Clifford’s office an arc of wooden chairs had been arranged facing his desk. Mary Lewis and Jimmy Connor were already sitting down. Mary had a silly grin she couldn’t hide. Jimmy glanced up and caught Rachel’s eye, worry lit large.

  “I won’t be fobbed off,” said Percy. “I will see my constituent. I have that right.”

  “All in good time,” said Clifford, taking his seat. “But first the important matter of our invasion committee.”

  They took their seats and Rachel noticed her phone on Clifford’s desk.

  He flipped open a dossier. “Thank you for coming at such short notice to this emergency meeting. I have a report on last night’s raids, thankfully already written up by Lieutenant Eckersley.”

  “Who is sitting in your bloody cell!” said Percy.

  “Which is the next item of business. An estimated 200 bombers returned for a second night of heavy raids on the city, dropping approximately 120 tonnes of explosives and over 9,000 incendiaries, causing widespread damage. The main bus depot in Hockley was–”

  “We know how much damage the Nazis have done. We’ve looked out of the window.” Percy pushed his chair forward so he could bang his fist on Clifford’s desk. “What we don’t know is why you’ve locked up the head of this committee.”

  “As reported in yesterday’s meeting,” said Clifford. “We had strong suspicions that an enemy spy was operating in our neighbourhood, signalling b
ombers and sabotaging fire equipment. I am pleased to say that spy – that spy ring, in fact – has been captured.”

  “Lieutenant Eckersley?” said Jimmy, half-laughing. “Charlie?”

  “We have three suspects in custody. A man calling himself Danny Pearce, identified as the suspect loitering in St Mary’s churchyard two nights ago, identified by one of our ARP wardens. Amy Parker, local housewife and single mother. Pearce was found with a list of planned German bombings of our city, and Miss Parker’s address. He was apprehended outside her house. Both he and Miss Parker are in possession of communication devices we’ve never seen before. We believe them to be some sort of walkie-talkie.”

  “And what’s that got to do with Charlie?” Jimmy asked.

  “Lieutenant Eckersley covered for Amy Parker, intervened in her interrogation and removed her from arrest. He is therefore under suspicion of collusion with the enemy.”

  “What a load of codswallop!” Jimmy cried.

  “Well, you would say that, wouldn’t you?” Mary said.

  “What the hell does that mean?”

  “I know your background.” She turned to Clifford. “I can’t believe he’s actually on this committee, knowing what he is. But then I suspect he’s part of this spy ring too.”

  “You bloody what?”

  “You’re not even British,” Mary spat.

  “I’m as British as you. I was born here.”

  “You’re a Hungarian Jew. Hungary’s our enemy. An Axis power.”

  “I was born here, you stupid cow.”

  “I don’t know why their sort haven’t been arrested under emergency powers. They should have been locked up at the start of the war.”

  “He’s British,” said Percy. “And if he’s also Jewish, why would he be working for Hitler?”

  “Is it true?” Clifford asked. “Are you Hungarian?”

  “His real name’s János Konrád, or some such rubbish.” said Mary. “Not James Connor.”

  “I was born here. My parents are Hungarian.”

  “This puts a rather different complexion on things,” said Clifford.