Troubled Midnight

by John Gardner

  They drove out along the Oxford road to what he said was a roadhouse called The Noah’s Ark. In her imagination Suzie pictured a roadhouse as being somewhere glamorous, smelling sweetly of sin and illicit whatever: the scent of wickedness. Roadhouses, often referred to in B Pictures from Hollywood, conjured up all kinds of immorality that made her blush again under her clothes and wish she could, perhaps, settle the indecision she felt about Tommy Livermore.

  He drove for about another mile and she asked him, “So, what do you do in the real world, Curry?”

  “I do exactly what I told Tommy. I go between spies and spies and spy-catchers.”

  “You honestly do that work? You’re a kind of spy?” Surprised.

  “Oh, indubitably.” He put on the sing-song voice of the actor Robertson Hare who used expressions like that to great comic effect. Oh yes. Indubitably. Oh yes. Oh dear. Oh my, yes. Made you smile even to think of it.

  “And how do you qualify for a job like that?”

  “The same way your average big footed copper qualifies for being in the Branch.” He meant Special Branch which used to be called the Irish Branch – the mailed fist of MI5 as someone once called it. “I joined up and got posted to Military Intelligence.”

  “Just like that?”

  “No. I’d been in the Corps at school,” he meant the Officers Training Corps, which, at the advent of war, was renamed the more classless Cadet Corps. “Went in and they immediately started to make me an officer.”

  He had done a couple of months basic training – as they called it – then started his officer training. “A lot of that was square bashing. Square bashing, and a bit of arms training: the rifle, the Bren, the Sten, two inch and three inch mortars, hand guns – Smith & Wesson .38s, Browning .9mm, and the big Colt .45s; the old heavy machine guns, the elderly, water-cooled Vickers gun, the Lewis gun, grenades, rifle launched grenades, then the PIAT (an acronym for the weapon’s targets: Projectile, Infantry, Anti-Tank). Platoon in defence and attack; map reading; on, on, on, kill, kill, kill. “They made us recite that like doggerel.”

  Curry began to giggle then chuckle.

  “Was it that funny?” Suzie asked, a trifle disturbed by the sudden levity.

  “On the parade ground we had a Brigade of Guards Sarn’t Major,” Another giggle. “Had a chip on his shoulder: inferiority complex, wanted to be better than us prospective officers. Bit like Tommy.”

  Suzie’s ears pricked up but she said nothing.

  “He hadn’t had the most exhaustive education, the sarn’t major, but he’d put himself through an English Language course at night school. Thought it was a degree.” Yet another giggle. “Used to say things like, ‘What you think I am lad? The Akond of bloody Swat?’ I thought that was hilarious. The Akond of bloody Swat.”

  Suzie giggled. Paused. “What did you mean about Tommy?”

  “Tommy getting passed over … You knew that, surely?”

  “No,” she said in a little voice and in the darkness Curry glanced towards her.

  “Oh lord,” he said. “I’m sorry. You close to Tommy, then?”

  “I suppose you could say that.”

  “Oh, bugger. Sorry.” Another pause. He told her that he was commissioned in the Intelligence Corps, then went on a round of courses. “Enemy documents; photographic interpretation; surveillance.” Then a stint with MI5. “When they were housed in Wormwood Scrubs. Bloody funny. The 72 bus conductor used to sing out, ‘All change for MI5’. Then, in 1940 I went onto General Brooke’s staff, Corps Intelligence Officer.”

  “What d’you mean about Tommy being turned down for a commission?”

  “You don’t want to know.”

  “I think I do,” almost physically feeling her ambivalence to Tommy.

  Curry pulled the car over and stopped.

  They had arrived – he put on the hand brake – a lowering dark barn-like building just off the main road. “All change for the Noah’s Ark,” Curry mumbled.

  “I think I do need to know,” she repeated.

  “How long you known him?”

  “Tommy? 1940. Late 1940.”

  “At his most vulnerable then. Desperately wanted MI5. Thought he had all the right attributes.”

  “And he was turned down? Tommy? MI5?” Incredulous.

  “Let’s go and have that drink.”

  “No. Tell me this. I think I need to know.”

  “It’s changing room gossip, Suzie. Christ, I wasn’t even in the UK then. I was scurrying around in Belgium and France trying to work my passage out of Occupied Europe…”

  “But when you got back?”

  “Yes, it was the talk of the town. Churchill, hot as hell and slashing his way through Whitehall, booted General Kell out of MI5.”

  “Who?”

  “Vernon Kell, captain in the Staffordshire Regiment, put in charge of MO5 – as it was – in 1910. Architect of MI5 as we know it today. Routed out the Kaiser’s spies in the ’14-’18 war, plagued the Communist Party of Great Britain, IRA, British Union of Fascists and a number of half-brained subversive organisations through the ’20s and ’30s. Built up MI5 from two people to what it is now. So, Vernon Kell, legendary head of MI5 – General Kell as he had become – leader of the Security Service over three decades got the order of the boot. Winston sacked him, and they say it just about destroyed him, the General. Problem was that the PM didn’t get on with Kell, and Kell, like a lot of people, didn’t trust Winston. Anyway MI5 didn’t have a happy year – they thought the sinking of the Royal Oak in Scapa Flow in October ’39 was an act of sabotage. That led them on a wild goose chase. And there was the explosion at Waltham Abbey – Royal Gunpowder Factory. So, Winston had Kell up in his room at the Admiralty, read him the riot act and chucked him out. Died last year. Friends and allies say he was broken-hearted and it was down to the PM.”

  “So?”

  “So, Tommy’s father’s a friend of Winston’s. Jimmy Livermore, Second Earl of Kingscote thick as thieves with the PM. Tommy wanted to be the big white chief of MI5, just as he wanted a military commission that he thought would go with the job. Believed he had all the qualities of a security Panjandrum. Knew it all. Tommy can be pretty much a vain bugger when he wants to be: very sure of his own view; always believes he’s right.” Another pause, three beats. “Bit like Chamberlain really.”

  Suzie found herself nodding in agreement in the dark – one of Tommy’s unlovable traits.

  “Any old how, Kingscote the elder began to pull strings and eventually the PM saw Tommy; heard him out; then told him there was no way he would appoint him as MI5’s big cheese. Said Tommy was too visible – Dandy Tom: all that stuff in the papers. ‘You catch murderers not spies, and you do it with a lot of – what’s the American word? – You do it with a lot of razzmatazz: personality stuff: publicity in the newspapers.’ Winston’s supposed to have said. ‘No! No! Tommy, sorry but you’re not the right material for clandestine spy catching.’ Made him look a bit of a fool because old Tommy had been shouting his mouth off in the sacred corridors of New Scotland Yard – ‘You’re going to have to get yourselves a new boy with my talents because I’ll be a secret squirrel soon enough.’”

  “Yes, let’s go and have a drink,” Suzie thought she’d heard enough and Curry didn’t demur. Got out, handed her from the car and held on to her elbow, like a real gent, guiding her to the entrance.

  The only thing illicit at the Noah’s Ark was possibly the bottles of whisky and gin. Otherwise it was rather ordinary with Christmas lights stretched around the bar, a waiter who needed a better suit, and a five-piece orchestra sawing away. Suzie was an expert in that kind of music, three strings, a piano and drums, like Mummy used to enjoy at Benthalls. She liked the Christmas lights as they were a relatively new thing. Suzie thought about her childhood and what a risk they ran with the little lighted candles on the tree in the hall.

  “What about something to eat? Curry offered, and Suzie said she was supposed to be dining with Tommy and th
e others at The Bear. “It’ll be better here,” Curry told her, his right hand in the small of her back, making her glow like a flarepath.

  “Maybe I should ring him,” she looked up at Curry realising she was being what her mother would call a coquette, but Mummy was given to little French words and phrases.

  “Maybe you should.” Curry smiled. “But don’t use me as an excuse. Tell him your great uncle’s turned up from Birmingham.”

  “How did you know I had a great uncle in Birmingham?” Genuinely surprised.

  “It’s my job.” A nod to the waiter who was leading them towards a table. “My stock in trade, you might say.”

  “Of course it is.” Suzie turned and looked the waiter in the eye. “You got a public telephone I can use?” Flashing a radiant smile.

  The waiter, in his threadbare grey suit, looking almost as old as the itch, led her to an alcove where she shuffled through her handbag for coins, retrieved her notebook with The Bear’s number in it. Dialled and finally got Tommy.

  “Where are you, heart?” he asked, and in her head she saw his brow furrow. “Been waiting ten minutes.”

  “Listen Tommy, there’s been a development. My uncle Rupert’s turned up.”

  “Where?”

  “Here. Wantage. Insists I have a meal with him. I think he knew one of our victims. He’s going to take me out to a place he knows. Got a car and a petrol ration.”

  In The Bear Hotel, some ten miles away Tommy Livermore coughed then said he’d been looking forward to seeing her. “You know we’re doing Brize Norton tomorrow? Leaving before dawn. Well, nine o’clock. Got all the boys and girls champing at the bit, heart. Get in touch when you’re back in the hotel.” He was irritated, she could tell. Irritated and possibly being overheard.

  “I may be late, Tommy. But I’ll be at breakfast. I promise.”

  He sounded reluctant but finally let her go, saying they’d a lot to talk about tomorrow.

  Suzie returned to Curry Shepherd and their table near the small string orchestra, going through their repertoire of gems from Gilbert & Sullivan, ‘The Maid of the Mountains’ and ‘Chu Chin Chow’, with a couple of popular foxtrots thrown in for good measure: ‘Moonlight Becomes You’, ‘Don’t Sit Under the Apple Tree’, and ‘I Couldn’t Sleep a Wink Last Night’ played alarmingly slowly.

  The waiter stood facing the wall trying to get the cork out of a bottle with a penknife.

  “He buy it?” Curry asked.

  “Me?” Suzie said, “I could sell ice cream to the Eskimos.”

  He had ordered – “Actually there wasn’t much of a choice, you either had the rabbit pie or the rabbit pie. He told me it was very good, local delicacy. Oh, and there’s some kind of soup for starters. Veg I think he said. Or it could have been hedge. Hearing, you know. All those bombs and all that.” Touching his right ear. “Mutt and Jeff,” he said.

  “Yes, I know.”

  “And I know you know,” another grin. “Several bad nights during the Blitz, I gather.”

  “Don’t talk about it,” the smile going out of her eyes.

  “One in particular,” he persisted. “One when you were a tethered goat while the bombs dropped. A tethered goat that Tommy staked out to catch a murderous loony.”

  “I told him my uncle Rupert had turned up,” changing the subject, seeing pictures in her head: that dreadful night just after Christmas 1940 when Tommy had put her in great danger, then took all the credit for capturing a multiple killer.

  “But your uncle’s not Rupert, he’s Charles.”

  “Mmm.” She agreed, nodding, letting him know she was building a little web of lies. “Tommy’s met Charles so you never know…” A shade surprised that Curry really did know about uncle Charles.

  The soup arrived smelling good, chicken with a lot of herbs and carrots in it.

  “You’re a bit like Tommy, aren’t you? Know how to give a girl a good time. His speciality was the Ritz.”

  “It’s the education, you know,” Curry picked up his spoon. “We did restaurants and wines in the Lower Sixth. Chat-up lines in the Fifth.”

  The soup was good. And hot. After a moment she asked if he was really concerned about Colonel Weaving and, “… what was it..?”

  “COSSAC. And yes. Yes. You see I knew Tim Weaving. Knew him quite well.”

  * * *

  SADLER FOLLOWED THE girl he called Dorothy. Put her in a cab and luckily picked up another just afterwards. Great luck because there were a lot of Americans around who easily snaffled taxis in London.

  Sadler was relieved to find there were no surprises. Her cab went through Shepherd Street and dropped her off near the corner. He paid off his cab and walked through, eyes adjusting to the dark. He stood back and watched her ring Julia’s bell, saw the thin stream of light as she was let in.

  He walked back, at ease now in the blackness, keeping off the main streets until he reached Piccadilly, crossed over and just missed being mown down by a grey double-decker bus looming out of the dark. Sadler jumped and it missed him, leaving him on the other pavement trembling with fear. He hated the dark.

  Eventually he found himself in St James’s Square, looking across the central garden with its bare trees just seeing the red brick Norfolk House. Thinking that’s where I have to be; that’s where I need to be, inside COSSAC, clear the board of all their plans for their wretched Overlord, and save Europe for the Führer.

  A Humber staff car pulled up in front and a woman driver went in, returning a few minutes later with two senior officers who got into the back. Before she restarted the engine, Sadler heard the officers laughing and wondered what they could find so amusing.

  As he walked away he thought that now he must use all his energy to infiltrate COSSAC. Do the job they’d sent him to do. Whatever it meant.

  * * *

  THEY HAD FINISHED the meal and now leaned forward, better to hear one another over the studiously picked out melodies of the Famous Five as they had dubbed the orchestra. Suzie heard the words in her head, and tried to blot them out:

  Dearly beloved how clearly I see,

  Somewhere in heaven you were fashioned for me.

  Angel eyes knew you,

  Angel voices singing to you …

  “So, how well did you know him, Curry?”

  “I vetted him. Made sure he was clean for COSSAC. Went back into his life.”

  “And what did you find?”

  “Lovely fellow; grammar school boy made good. Sandhurst. Career soldier. Commissioned in the Royal Warwickshire Regiment. Good leader of men; knew about disposition of troops in the field. First class officer. MC during the battle of France. Got his majority soon after the Warwickshires remustered after Dunkirk. Then he volunteered for everything going: commando training, then all the dangerous stuff, parachute, glider, the whole business.”

  “Paragon,” said Suzie. “Must’ve had something wrong: Achilles Heel?” she thought, they’ve got me talking their lingo now: all quick bursts of information.

  Curry nodded. “Achilles Heel,” nodded again. “A whole Achilles Foot as it happens. You know what his problem was. Saw it yesterday.”

  “A woman? Emily Bascombe?”

  “Women. Women beware women.”

  “What?”

  “Name of a play, Suzie. Webster I think. Someone soon after Shakespeare. We did him at school as well. Knew a fellow once…”

  “Knew a fellow once, what?”

  “Knew a fellow once who said you should read Hamlet every few weeks. Thought it had everything in it. Good as the Bible, this bloke used to say.”

  “Really? And Colonel Tim Weaving had the itch?”

  Curry nodded. “And scratched it regularly. Had several of them at one time but seemed to settle on this one. On your Emily. Knew it was trouble, he did. Spouted a lot of stuff about love…”

  “But you okayed him? For the vetting? For COSSAC?”

  “Of course. He was okay unless some female spy seduced him, and that wasn’t
likely with me keeping an eye out. Most unlikely as the Abwehr doesn’t seem to know about selecting its spies. They’re all pretty duff. I should say seemed pretty duff.”

  “Things’ve changed?”

  “They’ve been like bloody Laurel and Hardy up to now. As fast as they came in we picked ’em up. We had one guy walked into a railway station and asked where he was, and another, in Ireland, who asked what time the next train was due when there hadn’t been a train for thirteen years. You get complacent when that happens a few times.”

  The orchestra did a flourish, then a hesitant segue into ‘It’s a Lovely Day Tomorrow’. Suzie winced.

  “They’ve been amazingly cooperative. Faced with death or a quiet life being played back they don’t choose death. We’re playing back all but two of them. That’s the trouble I suppose. Straws in the wind.”

  “Straws in the wind?” Suzie repeated.

  “We’ve had a few pointers. Picked up some clues that they’re running someone who’s aimed straight at COSSAC and the invasion plans. Christ, Suzie, I shouldn’t even mention this to you, but you saw Weaving and his girlfriend. They’d been through the wringer, been tortured. Someone was trying to extract information from them – at least from Weaving. Whoever did it either got what they wanted or went too far, killed him by accident and had to wipe out Emily Bascombe because she knew too much. This is urgent, Suzie. Very urgent, with a capital Urge because time is shrinking.”

  “How urgent is a capital Urge?”

  “Work it out – less than two weeks to Christmas, which means two and a bit weeks to the New Year which is when we expect an announcement about the Supreme Allied Commander. When that’s out of the bag the invasion plan’ll be almost set in stone and there’ll be those who will want to reorganise it, make changes, argue over it. I mean if Monty’s involved – and he has to be one way or another – he’ll want to alter the whole shooting match just on principle. There’ll only be a handful of weeks to bed it all down and decide on the date – May or June by my reckoning. It’s getting bloody close, and if they have got someone on the loose, and if he gets into COSSAC … well, there’s the element of surprise up the spout: might as well not go at all. I mean we’ll be right up the Swannee.”