Troubled Midnight

by John Gardner

  Tommy gave a small sigh. “I don’t know, but I think that’s a Spike that should be blunted.”

  * * *

  LIEUTENANT COLONEL TIM Weaving sat in the right hand seat of the second glider: Colonel Weaving, CO of the Glider Pilot Regiment at the Heavy Glider Conversion Unit, Brize Norton, seeing his pupil, Sergeant Peter Day through another landing and at the same time getting a lift to Grove Aerodrome, a mile out of Wantage, two birds with one stone. As their tug aircraft peeled away from them after the trainee pilot had pulled the handle releasing them from the cables attached inboard on the leading edges of the wings, Colonel Weaving experienced that odd, stomach-rolling, heart-stopping moment as they seemed to be poised, unmoving, still in the air. It was always the same, the sense of being suspended, hanging in the silence, until the pilot put the nose down and turned to the right, lining up with the runway around two miles distant.

  The flight deck of the Horsa glider took up almost the entire nose of the aircraft: two sets of controls, basic instruments and the sense of really being in a greenhouse balanced at the sharp end of the glider.

  Weaving always felt exhilaration at the start of the descent and now he glanced to his left, checking that Sergeant Day had the lever right down to fully extend the flaps, the big slatted oblongs dropped out from the trailing edges of the wings. “Keep the nose down,” he muttered feeling the aircraft press upwards, reacting to the drag of the flaps.

  When it came to the landing technique, the big Horsa had none of the sophistication of powered flight. In simple terms you pointed the nose towards the runway, at an angle of almost 45 degrees, making a dive towards touchdown, using the flaps and elevators to slow the aircraft, lifting the nose into a stall as you got really close to the ground. Around them the air hissed, building in volume so that it sounded like heavy breakers on a shingle beach.

  Tim Weaving knew Wantage well: glancing to the left to see that they were crossing Wallingford Street, glimpsing the elegant Queen Anne house that Emily told him had once been a brewery, seeing the road winding up into the Market Square and, for a second, over the roofs just getting a flash of Emily’s house on Portway. She knew he was coming and he wondered if she had managed to get some ham for tonight. They’d have ham and salad, tomatoes and lettuce from her own garden. He felt the saliva turn acidic in his mouth as he thought of the malt vinegar she’d sprinkle on the lettuce and possibly the brown sauce she’d put on the table to bring out a taste of the ham.

  “Start your pullback now,” he cautioned the sergeant as they slid over the last houses and into the open country that ran up to the threshold of the runway. The nose rose, for a moment like a fairground ride, the speed bleeding off as they crossed the boundary fence, lifting and stabilizing, sinking in the stall to the runway, then the bump and rumble as they touched down, Sergeant Day braking as they ran on, rumbling and bumping.

  “Keep her level Sarn’t Day. Level. Brake. Come on. Harder.” And they slowed to a stop using about two thirds of the landing area, waiting for the team of erks coming out onto the runway and manhandling the machine off and onto the taxi track, beside the other Horsa that had come in from Brize Norton.

  Sergeant Long, the instructor who had been sitting in the rear of the machine, now came and stood behind the Colonel, muttering something about it being a shade fast, but an above average landing.

  As they climbed out, Tim Weaving walking towards the jeep standing ready for him, so one of the Whitley tugs came roaring down the runway at around fifty minus feet to drop a tow rope onto the concrete for the handling party to drag back and reattach to one of the gliders.

  “You’ll be okay now, Sarn’t Long?” Weaving smiled.

  “I’ll get him back to Brize in one piece, sir. Yes. See you tomorrow, sir.”

  “Bright and early,” said Tim Weaving.

  They all knew. The Colonel has his bit on the side waiting in Wantage, lucky bugger. His driver – bodyguard really – from Brize would pick him up in the morning early, bring him back to work.

  * * *

  AS SUZIE MOUNTFORD and Tommy Livermore walked back down Workhouse Hill, two half tracks, Bren Gun Carriers, came rattling behind them, overtaking and chewing up the Macadam and tarmac. There were good-natured catcalls and jeers from the men sitting in the rear of the vehicles, and Suzie lifted a hand to wave.

  “Don’t encourage them,” Tommy said, pouting a bit.

  “Why not? Who knows how long they’ve got.”

  A big four-engined Stirling crossed directly in front of them, left to right, low, probably heading to Harwell which was an OTU, mainly Wellingtons. In the distance a pair of training aircraft, Tiger Moths, looped and rolled.

  “Everywhere,” Suzie said. “They’re everywhere, aren’t they?” She continued with a long and somewhat passionate soliloquy about the thousands of men and women at this moment assembling and being readied for the assault on Hitler’s Fortress Europe.

  Tommy mused that she should have had an orchestra in the background playing ‘Land of Hope and Glory’, then ‘There’ll Always Be An England’. “Love it when you talk dirty, heart.” He grinned.

  That night he made love to her in the quilted bedroom in The Bear Hotel and while it was all happening he muttered, “Do the poor people do this, heart?”

  “’Course,” Suzie breathed back. First time she’d not found an excuse in months.

  “Well they shouldn’t, it’s much too good for them.”

  It was neither new nor original but Tommy liked his little jokes.

  They had no idea that they would be back in Wantage before Christmas. 15th December, 1943. A Wednesday. A double murder. Scotland Yard called in.

  Chapter Three

  TOMMY TOOK TWO cars. Suzie Mountford with Cathy Wimereux, the WDS who had taken over from Molly Abelard and was given full privileges, carried a weapon and had done all the tough-guy courses. Cathy – a tall girl, five ten, five eleven, old gold hair helped a shade, and a good figure from all the exercise – was all set to become a legend in her own lunchtime, just like Molly had been. We’re a Norman family, she admitted. “Nobs at one time, we bear the name of the resort which, family legend maintains we once owned. Wimereux. Sounds good, but I was brought up in an oversized flat in Bayswater. A long way from Normandy watering holes.”

  Shirley Cox came as well, pleased as punch because she was seldom allowed in the field, a WDS now, bit full of herself. ‘The Field’ was anywhere north of Watford and south of Walthamstow.

  As for specialists there were Ron Worrall and Laura Cotter, with Dennis Free, ‘Smiler’ as they called him because he always looked happy. Could have called him ‘Happy’ but they preferred ‘Smiler.’ ‘Smiler’ was there to take the snaps and do lots of other clever forensic things like measuring for the trajectory of missiles, or doing the chalk marks around bodies. Asset to the Squad, Tommy called him: liked Dennis Free, thought a lot of his talents.

  Wednesday, 15th December 1943. Winter already in the air, tripping coldly up the nostrils and slapping people around the face, burning the cheeks. Christmas only ten days off now and lucky if you could get a chicken, let alone a turkey; as for Christmas puddings, forget it: dried fruit was like gold dust.

  The Reserve Squad had been given a second car after all the run-around they’d had on the Ascoli case in ’42. Another Wolseley, but not another driver so ‘Smiler’ had to drive Ron and Laura, while as ever Brian drove Tommy. Cathy, Shirley and Suzie in the back, cramped but putting brave faces on it. It was said that Brian had been a chauffer at Kingscote Grange where Tommy had grown up, heir to the Earl of Kingscote: the honourable Tommy Livermore who had lived on the huge Kingscote Estate. Billy Mulligan, executive sergeant to the Reserve Squad, had some sort of connection with Kingscote from way back in the thirties, maintained that Brian was more than a chauffer, said he was a minder as well. Certainly Brian had that extra something about him, carried himself well, never told tales out of school, kept his trap buttoned about the long relationsh
ip Suzie had conducted with Tommy.

  “What’s the guff, Chief?” Cathy must have known Molly, they all deduced, because she had the same way about her, always calling the DCS ‘Chief.’

  “You know as much as I do.” Tommy was all zipped up, silent, nursing the facts in his head, not releasing them for general consumption. “Two dead. A man and a woman. The man appears to be military and is not the woman’s husband. Both dead in a cellar. House in Wantage, Berkshire. Up the road from your stamping ground in Newbury, Sarn’t Mountford.” Looked like butter wouldn’t melt in his mouth.

  “Yes, sir. Know it, sir.” For the benefit of Cathy Wimereux who may not know about her and Tommy; and a squadron of pigs had just taken-off from the aerodrome at Abingdon, she thought.

  It took them four hours, nearly five, London to Wantage by a circumlocutious route, London to Oxford then over to Wantage via Boar’s Hill, past Frilford Golf Club, on through a dozen villages showing the first signs of winter. Not a direct route by any stretch of the imagination and to add to the frustration they were held up all over the place by convoys of lorries, British and American Army convoys, one heavy load on a special RAF transporter, even a long and cocky trail of three ton trucks and command cars belonging to the US 8th Air Force, off we go into the wide blue yonder, keep the wings level and true!

  When they finally arrived – up the narrow Grove Street – into the Market Place, “We want Mill Street,” Tommy sounded short, snappy, not willing to give anyone the benefit of the doubt. Brian, in the lead car, swept round the square twice before realising that Mill Street forked off from where Grove Street joined the Square, hard against the Town Hall, new in the 1870s, Victorian mock-Tudor and fussy, part of the ‘new’ bit now taken over by The Cosy Tea Rooms. “Have to see how cosy that gets,” Tommy muttered darkly as they turned into Mill Street, purring down the hill, past the big mill building at the bottom, on the left just beyond The Shears’ public house. “I’d like to know how many pubs they’ve got here,” Tommy again grunting, playing the eccentric for the sake of the girls. “Looks like two for every man, woman and child living here.”

  And they pulled up in front of the Police Station.

  A uniformed inspector was down the dancers and at the car’s door, reaching for the rear door, just as the second Wolseley pulled up behind them. But Tommy, being Tommy, was at the front next to Brian, unfolding himself and beaming over the car roof, noting well enough that the inspector was out so fast he must have been keeping cave peering out of a handy window.

  “Turnbull,” said the uniformed inspector. “Michael Turnbull. Honour to have you here, Chief Super. Honour indeed.”

  He would have continued to pour his verbal homage at the visiting DCS who pulled a sour face and quickly plugged the gap with, “Just want to get on with the job, Inspector. Need to talk to your CID: get briefed and start work.” He even ignored the proffered hand, brushing past the uniformed senior officer in charge of Wantage Police Station as if he didn’t exist. Suzie thought he was getting close to his high-handed manner, not his best side in a strange place, and it didn’t do much good for the actual building either, because Tommy’s team tended to look away from the wretched inspector who was by now building up a florid colour on his cheeks. Unhealthy.

  Tommy disliked fawning; hated drawing attention to his supposedly aristocratic background. He saw it as often as not as a creeping, bum-licking, unnecessary bit of braggadocio, usually an attempt to ingratiate the culprit with the Livermore family. So Tommy put a stop to it whenever it appeared: as it always did when they were called out to provincial murders, which were after all, like love, their reason for living.

  “Turnbull,” Inspector Turnbull introduced himself again as he hurried up the steps behind the Detective Chief Superintendent. “Michael Turnbull.”

  “Heard you the first time, Inspector. Sorry to rush you but I’d like to get on. Take a look at what’s happened. Time is of the essence, careless talk all that kind of thing, eh?”

  Oh, Lord, Suzie thought, he’s giving the man his run-around-the-garden treatment. She hated Tommy when he was in this mood. Indeed, Tommy was adept at confusing the issues, leading others down blind alleys or losing them in the long grass. Suzie ought to know: one of his least endearing habits. She’d been in the long grass with him, metaphorically speaking of course.

  Inside the station it was all grey and functional; no sign of the female touch, dust on the dark furniture, dull bluish linoleum under foot. A uniformed officer stood beside the front counter waiting for customers, old ladies who’d lost their cats, old soldiers who weren’t fading away, or old lags who were giving themselves up for a more peaceful life, away from the wife.

  “Need an office,” Tommy lunged towards the nearest door handle. “This’ll do, Turnbull. We have this one, yes? Murder Room.”

  Inspector Turnbull was going to fat, a shade short of the height requirement of five foot eight inches and pushing retirement age, but who counted these days? They needed inspectors and chief inspectors to take charge of country patches like Wantage – not exactly the front line trenches when it came to crime-fighting these days, so Turnbull would fit neatly into the market town. He looked a quiet, nonconfrontational kind of man, apart from the ludicrous greying toothbrush moustache that seemed to have a life independent of its owner. Yet even this, Suzie had to admit to herself, broke up the hatchet line of his face, thus obeying the first rule of camouflage.

  Tommy waited in the doorway to the right of the front counter, still staring at Turnbull, questioning him with his terrible smile.

  “Mine actually,” the inspector grimaced, “But you’re welcome to it, sir. Too big for me really. There’s a nice cosy one at the back I can move into.” He even looked pleased about it. Perhaps, Suzie wondered, he would rather be away from the customers now murder had reared its ugly head.

  The rest of the team were pushing in on Inspector Turnbull, filling the little lobby that formed the Police Station’s entrance hall.

  “Bit small,” Suzie spoke low, referring to the office.

  “Good,” Tommy glared round the room. “’Nother couple of desks. Two more phones, four chairs. It’ll do us well. What about diggings, Inspector?”

  “I’ve had you booked into The Bear, sir. Our best hotel.” He pronounced it ’otel after the manner of the middle classes. “The rest we’ve spread around. Blue Boar, King Alfred’s Head…”

  “I have to be close to the Chief!” Snapped Cathy.

  “As do I,” muttered Suzie.

  Shirley Cox rolled her eyes and Laura Cotter’s eyebrows tried to attack her hairline.

  “Yes,” Tommy agreed. “Could you do that, Inspector?” Giving the impression that he would prefer the whole team to be billeted in one place. “Easier for us, eh? Understand?”

  “Of course, Chief Superintendent. Of course.” Nodding, with vacant eyes.

  “And now your CID people?” As if he expected Turnbull to produce them here, in the middle of the office.

  “All three of them, yes, sir. They’re all up at the house. Murder site.”

  “Your entire CID’s up there?”

  “I only have one detective sergeant and two detective constables, Mr Livermore; and one of those constables was only brought in this morning from Oxford.”

  Tommy had walked away from him, into the room, a hand patting one of the two desks, sliding along the woodwork like the hand of a dragon wife testing for dust, catching out the maidservant. “The murder site?” he queried.

  “There are two bodies, sir. One is the commanding officer of the Glider Pilot Regiment at the Heavy Glider Conversion Unit, Brize Norton. A Colonel Weaving. Tim Weaving. The other is the wife of Wantage’s greatest war hero, Captain Bobby Bascombe VC: Emily ‘Bunny’ Bascombe. It appears that Mrs Bascombe was, shall we say, keeping company with the Colonel. Now they’re both dead.”

  “And where is the gallant captain?”

  “Last seen at the Primo Solo bridge in Sicily. Ju
ly. He’s a POW They put him in the bag and actually spirited him back to Germany when they realised they’d struck gold. He was with the Eighth Army, got his VC at Tobruk. Wantage has a kind of history with VCs. Next to The Bear you’ll see the VC Gallery, stuffed full of grisly portraits of men winning their Victoria Crosses.”

  “And your entire CID is at the murder site?” as though he hadn’t even heard the bit about the Victoria Cross.

  Turnbull nodded.

  “And where would that be?”

  “Portway House. Portway. Stands on its own overlooking the College playing fields.”

  “The College?”

  “Locals call King Alfred’s School, the College.”

  “How terribly affected!” Tommy muttered. In her mind, Suzie saw that lone house on the hot Sunday afternoon back in August, the woman leaving it, coming down the steps, slim attractive, hurrying as though late for church, glancing back from the corner by The Royal Oak giving them a suspicious look.

  “Witnesses?” Tommy raised his eyebrows.

  “One who found the bodies. The Colonel’s sergeant. Came to pick him up this morning.”

  Tommy nodded, “And where is he?”

  “Here, sir. I’ve brought him back here. He seemed shaken up.

  “A soldier shaken up?”

  “Yes, Mr Livermore.”

  “Only the one witness?”

  “Only the one, yes.”

  “We’ll go straight out to the house then,” Tommy already moving, purposeful. “You deal with everything else then, Turnbull…? Keep the witness safe. Feed him strong tea. I’ll talk to him later.”

  “Of course, sir.”

  Tommy took one step closer to the door, changed his mind about something. Stopped, turned round, “Sarn’t Cox?”

  “Yes, Chief?” From Shirley, ready for anything and head stretched forward to better attend what her boss had to say.