Troubled Midnight

by John Gardner

  “Then why’re you telling me all this?”

  Curry gave a wide smile, engulfing her. She thought he looked so much younger when he smiled, and he seemed to know exactly what she was thinking. “You surely knew my people wanted you moved?” he said, heavy on the incredulity.

  “Moved. Where moved?” she was almost angry.

  Curry spoke low. “We did. We wanted you. They also wanted to give you the George Medal, after that business in ’40, but Tommy Livermore wouldn’t hear of it.”

  Suzie’s jaw drooped. Just before she had been co-opted onto Tommy’s Reserve Squad, in 1940, she had learned that a team of senior officers, Tommy included, had put her on a list of young female officers set aside for special grooming and responsibility. They were, they said, ‘looking to the future’, to a time when women police officers would automatically have bigger accountability, play a greater role, within the Metropolitan police force when, at that time they were regarded as simply secretaries, or women to run errands for more senior officers. On Suzie’s first posting to a busy CID team her senior officer had asked her, “How d’you make a good cup of tea, Sergeant?”

  “Tommy blocked the George Medal? They were going to..?”

  “Said he didn’t want you to get above yourself. Also said that, while demanding a certain amount of courage, the incident was in your normal line of duty. That’s absolutely true. I saw the papers myself.”

  “Normal line of duty?” voice rising so that Curry put his hand across the table and took hold of her wrist to quieten her. “Have you any idea what I did, Curry?”

  He nodded, knowing that she’d been set up as a target for a psychotic killer who had almost strangled her. It had been in all the papers.

  “I was in hospital for almost two weeks. Couldn’t talk properly for three.”

  “He did say that you showed great pluck.”

  “You sure that was the word he used. Curry? He was sleeping with me … that was his problem. Moved in with me. Probably thought I’d wear the gong on my nightie and it would get in the way.”

  “Sush,” he stroked her hand and smiled at her as though she was a small child who could only understand simple things.

  “I’ll pluck him,” she said, her mouth twisting. And the orchestra came to the end of ‘It’s a Lovely Day Tomorrow’. “I’ll pluck him alright.”

  The orchestra was taking a welcome break and the players glanced in Suzie’s direction as they left the podium, the drummer giving a little end-of-set riffle on his snare drum.

  “Suzie,” Curry in his calming voice. “Suzie, don’t go off at half cock.”

  “I’ll make bloody certain that he never goes off at bloody half cock ever again.”

  “Suzie.”

  “I can hardly believe it. The bastard.”

  “Suzie, it’s true. But there’s no point in having a big set-to about it…”

  “Why not?”

  “Because I’m not supposed to know, and you can’t say where you heard it. For one thing…”

  “Oh, you bloody public school boys are all the same. Why don’t you just drive me straight back to Wantage and I’ll resign from his bloody Reserve Squad. Resign from the Met.”

  “There’s no need for you to do that. No need for you to resign. We can simply have you transferred. My boss’ll welcome you with the proverbial open arms.”

  “Who’s the ‘we’ in ‘we can simply have you transferred’?”

  “War Office Intelligence Liaison. Couple of dingy offices near Baker Street tube station. Plenty of dust and the odd popping gas fire – the usual appurtenances of people in the spy trade.”

  “I wouldn’t be brought over just to clean and make the coffee?” her hand raised in warning.

  “You’d be out in the field. May even be dangerous.”

  She frowned, then nodded. “Give me a couple of days. I’d like to pick my time for leaving. Stage the dramatic walk out. Know what I mean?”

  “I know exactly what you mean,” said Curry Shepherd with a grin.

  They drove back in silence until they got into Grove Street where he stopped the car out of sight from The Bear across the Market Square. Feeling very daring, Suzie reached up and kissed Curry on the cheek, just a swift peck during which she wondered what the real thing would be like.

  She crossed the Square and let herself into the hotel; picked up her key then went over the cobbles to climb the narrow stairway leading to the Coffee Room, preparing to negotiate the tables and get into the corridor leading to her room. She reached the top, blinked and took one step forward when someone moved in the blackness ahead.

  “Who’s there?” she asked, loud enough to sound like the voice of authority.

  “Oh, Skip. Thank heaven it’s you.” Shirley Cox was beside her.

  “What the hell?”

  “I had to come over with a report from Ron and Laura. Delivered it to the Chief, but I’ve hung on hoping to see you. I tried your door…”

  “What is it, Shirley?”

  “Just thought you’d like to know. The Chief’s in his room alright, but he’s not on his tod. She’s in here. Cathy Wimereux, our gallant new sergeant. Very cosy it looked.”

  Chapter Seven

  “NICE TIME WITH Charles?” Tommy stayed behind his newspaper, one hand on the toast rack, the remains of his bacon and tomato pushed to one side. Suzie always reckoned Tommy as a messy eater, particularly when there was Worcester sauce around. The paper’s headlines were divided, the main story, taking up half the front page, concerned General Henry (Hap) Arnold of the 8th US Army Air Force declaring that they were almost ready to start a 24-hour 360-degree bombing campaign on Germany, from North, South, East and West. He had said, “We’re going to hit them every day, and the RAF’s going to do it every night.” The other story was confirmation that Field Marshal Rommel had been appointed C-in-C of ‘Fortress Europe’.

  “Charles who?” Suzie asked, pulling up a chair: sitting.

  Tommy put the paper down and helped himself to another slice of toast. He didn’t look at Suzie. “Your uncle Charles. Dinner with him last night, didn’t you say?”

  A waitress in a full length wraparound apron poured coffee for Suzie.

  “No. I told you I was having dinner with my uncle Rupert.”

  “Who’s he? Don’t know him. Never heard of him, heart.” Still did it without looking.

  “He’s my great uncle on my mother’s side.”

  “Ah.” Exaggerating the nod. “I spoke to the ma last night.”

  “Oh, shit,” Suzie, brought up by Anglican nuns, thought.

  “My ma, that is.”

  Sigh of relief.

  “All very smart, she’d been with Pa to have tea with Mr and Mrs King. Buck House and all that crap, eh?”

  This time she nodded. He still wasn’t looking at her. At one point the Countess of Kingscote, Tommy’s ma – once described as overbearing as a land mine – had been a lady-in-waiting to the Queen so afternoon teas, or lunches, at Buckingham Palace were regular occurrences which Tommy loathed.

  “Loads of gossip,” he said. “Talk of an arranged marriage between Princess Elizabeth and Philip of Greece, but the best is that they’re very worried about the balcony. Structurally unsafe so it’s being strengthened with concrete because they want to use it when celebrating the victory. A jot presumptuous I thought. Lot of dying to be done before that day.”

  “Lot of gongs to be won as well,” it was out before Suzie could stop herself. Oh shit she thought again and was sure that Tommy stiffened without looking at her.

  “Yes, heart. Yes, I suppose so. How was it at the Noah’s Ark? Any good at all?”

  So he knew. “You have your spies everywhere,” she said.

  “Just like you, heart. Everywhere from what I hear.”

  Oh, very comical, yes. She was saved from answering by Cathy Wimereux sliding into the seat next to Tommy and giving a breathless “Good morning,” throaty but underplayed and leaving Suzie in no doubt a
bout what had been going on while she had been with Curry.

  Cathy wore a biscuit coloured skirt with a jacket top – the latest Utility design with a bit of light blue piping round the lapels. Her old gold hair had a sheen to it, smooth as bloody silk, Suzie thought. Like that bloody complexion, sodding peaches and cream.

  “Right,” Tommy pushed his chair back. “In the Murder Room at nine sharp.” Stood up. “I’ll be briefing the Squad on what today’s going to be all about, if you’d care to be there Susannah.”

  He looked at Suzie for the first time that morning and she saw the glint of anger in his eyes. Like a death ray, she thought. Like a death ray that you’d read about in kids comics. But she couldn’t define whether the hatred was for her or himself. It had been a long time since she’d seen a kids’ comic: back when she was living at home and her brother James was there in the school holidays. Now James had followed his uncle Vernon Fox’s lead and was at the Royal Marine Depot, Deal – a Y-Scheme candidate, potential officer.

  Tommy turned, squared his shoulders and strode towards the restaurant doors, back straight yet somehow different: a view of him she never remembered seeing before, a stiffness of gait, the angry way he cocked and held his head.

  In the thirty seconds or so that it took him to reach the doors, Suzie’s mind was peppered with a collage of images from her recent past with Tommy Livermore: the first meeting, then the first dinner they’d had in The Ritz when he told her that she was on a list of women earmarked for promotion against the future; their first kiss, the delicious love they’d shared; the secret things, hiding it all from other people; the moment he had made her a woman, had taught her the arcane language and physical tricks of love; his body; the delicious feeling of being in thrall to him; the devotion she had felt; the long days of immense summer pleasure and the short days of winter bleakness as he had started to let his true self show from inside the carapace that was his reality together with his extraordinary vulgarity.

  Inside, Suzie reeled as if she had been punched in the face. For a long time she had been trying to find a way of finishing it, but now that it had happened all she felt was anger. She turned her head, glaring at Cathy Wimereux. She still had Tommy’s last words echoing in her ears: “In the Murder Room at nine sharp. I’ll be briefing the squad on what today’s going to be all about, if you’d care to be there Susannah.”

  “Well Cathy,” knowing that there were tears forming in her eyes Suzie bit her lip. “Well, did he debrief you last night?”

  “Suzie … I … I…”

  “Don’t bother,” she spat out quietly. “I’ve only been living with him for the past three years. You’re welcome to him,” and she rose from the table and stalked out, thinking this was all a bit adolescent. Like people in their teens when it was almost a matter of life or death to know who loved whom, who was out and who was in.

  Last year Tommy, in one of his amazingly gentle moments had written another poem for her, left it under her pillow:

  You wonder in the night,

  How much I care and why,

  You wonder if it’s big or slight,

  You probe and gouge with silent cry

  Not realising that you’ve become

  My day, my night,

  My everyone.

  She thought of that now, and the dozens of other little fractured poems he’d written for her, to her. Head down she thumped out of the restaurant, almost flat-footed, and bumped straight into Curry Shepherd, obviously on a recce, searching for her.

  “Whoa!” Curry put his hands on her shoulders. “Whatever’s the matter, Suzie? Seen a ghost?”

  Her lip trembled, then she steadied herself and took control again. “No, but Tommy … Well, I don’t know if it was him or me … but…”

  “Come and sit down,” he edged her towards one of the tables out in the Coffee Room and before she knew it, she was seated and the waiter, the omnipresent Harris, was bending over the table, “Madam didn’t have any coffee. Shall I get one of the girls to serve it here?”

  “Yes, please” Curry made a gesture to indicate the sooner the better.

  “That waiter gives me the twitch,” Suzie fumbled for her cigarettes. Curry leaned over and lit one for her.

  “So what’s up?”

  “I think Tommy spent the night with our new sergeant – Cathy Wimereux. Not that it matters,” she spoke low, almost a whisper, a catch in her throat. “But he knew where I was last night, so presumably he knows we were together, and…”

  “It doesn’t matter.”

  “I think I should be the judge of what matters…” Sharp, sounding confrontational when she didn’t mean to be.

  “Suzie, Tommy received this at around six o’clock this morning,” Curry opened his dispatch case, that looked like the one Suzie had used to carry her music to school, and passed an official-looking sheet of notepaper to her just as one of the waitresses set a small pot of coffee on the table and asked for her room number.

  Suzie mumbled the number and took the paper from Curry.

  “It was brought down by despatch rider and they had to wake him up. I gather he didn’t take too kindly to that.”

  “Not at his best first thing,” Suzie gave what she supposed was a brave little smile, then started to read the paper he’d handed to her.

  TO: Detective Chief Superintendent Tommy Livermore.

  FROM: Commissioner Metropolitan Police, New Scotland Yard.

  DATE: 16th December 1943

  RE: Woman Detective Sergeant Susannah Mary Mountford.

  With effect immediately the above named officer will be transferred from the Reserve Squad to special duties War Office Intelligence Liaison Group. She will still be allowed all privileges within the Reserve Squad such as information concerning cases under consideration of the Squad, attendance at briefings, special instructions, investigations etc.

  Also, effective today, Woman Detective Sergeant Mountford is promoted to Woman Detective Inspector.

  The signature was scrawled at the bottom of the order, plus a few words neatly written in distinctive green ink. Tommy, it read, this is a significant move and promotion aimed at putting the Met in a very favourable light in backing up the Military. I am sure you will be as pleased as we are that DI Mountford has made great strides, leading her to such an important posting. She will, I know, be a credit to the Met.

  Suzie mumbled again and gasped. “WDI? Woman Detective Inspector?…”

  “I have the promulgation of your promotion here,” Curry slid a sealed envelope across the table. It was addressed to DI Susannah Mountford and was thick, bulky and with that weighty feel that, in spite of paper shortages, was still a characteristic of officialdom.

  “Tommy knew all this before…?”

  “Before you saw him, yes. We’ll go to his briefing and follow things up, keeping a watching brief on whatever happens today.”

  “But who am I responsible to?… I…”

  “To me in the first instance. Finally to Colonel Partridge, the boss of WOIL. I hope to take you up to meet him later on. Maybe this evening. Elsie Partridge, that is. Good man. We’re all responsible to him.”

  Couple of dingy offices near Baker Street tube station. Plenty of dust and the odd popping gas fire – the usual appurtenances of people in the spy trade. Bloke called Elsie?

  “Baker Street?” she asked.

  “Quick learner.”

  “Did you get me transferred, Curry?”

  “Not me personally, no. Elsie Partridge thought it was about time after I spoke to him last night.”

  “So you gave it a little push?”

  “Possibly. Look, I’ve got this for you,” he handed her a flat leather wallet, flicking it open to show her ID as a member of War Office Intelligence Liaison under the crown and crossed swords of the army insignia.

  She took it and studied it. “So, I’m what Tommy called a secret squirrel?”

  “You’re what he calls a Funny, and that’s probably how it’ll feel
for a while.”

  She grinned, “Do I get inducted, like in the Free Masons? Rituals in dead of night? I get cleared for top secret stuff?”

  “Some, only we call it ‘Classified’.” He grinned back.

  “Go ahead then, tell me all,” she sipped her foul coffee and grinned, beginning to feel a little better.

  “Nothing to tell you as yet, except what I’ve already told you, that we’re concerned about Tim Weaving’s position, his access to COSSAC, whatever he might have had in Classified information regarding Overlord…”

  “Overlord?”

  “Ah, yes, that’s your first bit of inside guff. Overlord is the code word for the invasion of Occupied Europe, and that’s about all you’ll have for the time being. Oh, you have signed the Official Secrets’ Act haven’t you?”

  “Every copper in the land has to sign it, Curry. Yes.”

  “Good, then we’re all set for Tommy’s briefing. Finish your coffee, go and get yourself prettied up and we’ll go down to Mill Street nick as you coppers call it.”

  “I am prettied up,” she said with a slice of anger.

  Chapter Eight

  EVERYONE WAS THERE – the whole team – seated at desks, and on desks, with Tommy standing by a recently acquired blackboard looking like a Prep School master. There were seven names written on the board:

  Sergeant ‘Monkey’ Gibbon

  Sergeant Peter ‘Mulfy’ Mulford

  Sergeant Peter Alexander

  Sergeant Christopher Long

  Sergeant Major Pearce ‘Kissme’ Hardy DSM

  Major ‘Shed’ Hutt MC

  Captain Wilson Sharp

  Captain ‘Bomber’ Puxley MC

  “Come in, gentlemen,” he said when Curry and Suzie opened the door. He wasn’t smiling and he stressed the gentlemen like the old joke about the butler walking in on the master and a chambermaid.

  Dennis Free was a gent, got up and offered Suzie his chair. “Thanks, Dennis, we’ll stand at the back.” Generous smile and a nod of the head. She followed Curry to the back and they leaned against the wall like a couple of oiks waiting for something to happen, to give someone a kicking but that rarely happened these days.