Troubled Midnight

by John Gardner

  “We’re okay, doc,” Curry said adding, “Aren’t we, Suzie?”

  “Right as rain,” Suzie wasn’t all that convincing.

  “I’ll be the judge of that,” the doctor confident, brim full of medical knowledge, walrus moustache and a barrelful of laughs.

  “The doc’ll be the judge of that,” Colonel Belcher added unnecessarily. Suzie wondered if he was a bit of an unnecessary man, didn’t like him.

  “Need somewhere to examine them,” the doc looked around searching for a likely door and the mess sergeant came out from behind the bar and said they could use his little office. “I’ve got this caboose round the back,” he told them. “You’re welcome to use that.”

  The doctor thanked him while Suzie was ready to give him an argument because she knew caboose was the wrong word but somehow didn’t want to take him up on it when the time came.

  The doctor smiled at her. “Take you first, Miss … er … Miss…”

  “Mountford,” Suzie supplied, then tried to get up, couldn’t at first because her legs wouldn’t do the trick, so the doctor put an arm round her shoulders and lifted her up, walking her along until they got into the mess sergeant’s office where the doc gave her a swift going over, all the little tests.

  “You seem to be okay?” it wasn’t quite a proper question. “No bruises? No abrasions except your knees. You’ll be as right as rain.”

  They had got the pair back to the mess in an ambulance that had turned up the same time as a fire engine and a squad of RAF Regiment men. The car was a blackened skeleton by the time they put the fire out, and an armaments officer was soon probing about giving notes to a corporal with a clipboard.

  Tommy was poking around with Shirley Cox and Dennis Free following him like a couple of trained guinea pigs, sniffing out devious bits of electrics trying to work out whether the explosion had been triggered by fuse, or timer.

  Back in the mess, Curry Shepherd went into the doctor’s, makeshift surgery after Suzie came out, still unsteady on her feet.

  The doc did almost the same things he had done with Suzie, felt all over for suspected broken bones, did a few tests, tried the reflexes with a little rubber hammer, looked into his eyes with an ophthalmoscope, and his ears with a little light – his auriscope – talked all the time, happy-happy, then got him to spread his hands out in front of him, palms down, fingers open, watching them moving about as though they had a mind of their own, the fingers waving around like an aspen leaf in a force nine gale.

  “You’re going to have to take it easy for a while,” the doctor cautioned.

  “Got to get to London, doc,” Curry said, concerned and showing it. “Imperative.”

  “Well you’re not driving yourself there,” the doctor looked grave. “Out of the question.” He said. “Why’ve you got to go?”

  “Important meeting. Essential.”

  “Essential in the sense that it could endanger the war effort if you didn’t go?”

  “Absolutely. It is that serious.” Curry performed a weaving motion with his body, like a boxer preparing for a fight.

  The doctor swallowed, then did a slow nod, “Well you shouldn’t drive yourself for at least twenty-four hours. Bloody dangerous if you did.”

  “Then I’ll have to resort to that old Navaho Indian trick of begging and pleading for transport.”

  Curry picked his way back into the ante-room where Suzie was sitting up, still drinking tea and being chatted to by Tommy Livermore who was leaning forward, one hand on her arm, Cathy Wimereux and Dennis Free stood quietly by the door, keeping to themselves, not eyeballing Tommy, a bit sheepish.

  Tommy was saying he was concerned for her. “Almost had your head and horns blown off so you must be feeling a bit shaky…”

  “I’ll be okay, Tommy. I’ll be fine…”

  “Look, I’m sorry. Right? Really sorry.” She knew he wasn’t talking about the shooting and the explosive device.

  “If you’re talking about us, it’s been coming for a while, Tom. I think we’ve both come to a decision.” Idly she thought this goes deeper, deeper than death, then considered that was a bloody silly thing to think: sounded pretentious and stupid.

  “Doesn’t make it any easier.”

  “No, but…”

  “Just watch out.” Quiet, almost a whisper. “People in Curry’s line of business can be dangerous.”

  “Tommy, I’ll be fine.”

  “Can’t be too careful.”

  “She’s just told you, she’ll be fine…” Curry was standing right beside him.

  “I’m sure, yes” Tommy looked unconvinced.

  Suzie said something about having to get to the meeting in London. Tommy raised his eyebrows, “And how’re you going to bloody get there now Curry’s car’s gone for a burton?”

  Curry said he’d find a way, he’d fix it, talk to the colonel, and Tommy shot back a crack about secret squirrels having more pricks than a secondhand dartboard. Unpleasant. For a moment Suzie thought they might exchange blows, but Tommy just glared at Curry, who glared back and Suzie tried to glare at both of them.

  Eventually all the glaring got too much and Curry said he had to arrange the transport. “You be alright?” he asked Suzie.

  She nodded, and reluctantly he left the room.

  “Tommy there’s nothing between us – Curry and me, I mean.” As if she had to explain.

  Tommy grunted.

  “Curry didn’t ask for me,” she began. “It was his boss, apparently. Tommy, us … well, it’s just come to a natural end … I had a great time, you made a woman of me and we worked well together.” In the back of her head she heard an old song,

  It is best to be off with the old love,

  Before you are on with the new.

  And she didn’t even know if they were the right words, just hearing a memory, her mother and father singing it around the piano, Daddy playing like he always did when they had family parties at Christmas. The Indian Love Lyrics and a song they really loved called ‘The Beggars’.

  How jolly are we beggars

  Who never toil for treasure,

  We all agree in liberty

  And poverty befriends us

  Come away,

  Come away,

  Let no evil care be found,

  Mirth and joy,

  Never cloy,

  While the sparkling wit goes round.

  And she began to cry, big breathless sobs so Tommy moved towards her, ready to be of comfort, but she pushed him away. Just stayed there knowing it was all a mixture of the shock of being shot at and then the bomb in Curry’s car and her half-decision to end it all with Tommy who had been so wonderful and then proved to have some habits she didn’t like and wasn’t really the man she thought him, or the one painted in the newspapers – Dandy Tom Livermore. All men, she thought, most men anyway, were the same. Feet of clay she supposed.

  After about twenty minutes Curry returned to tell them the colonel had arranged a RAF staff car and driver to take them to London. A little cocky, Suzie thought, bit full of himself, showing off that he could handle a little thing like getting transport.

  Tommy asked them both to sit down, wanted to tell them something: and began –

  “What happened this afternoon … the shooting, then the car blowing up. Well, no accident, not even a warning. Someone wants the two of you dead. Curry, if you know something I don’t, for heaven’s sake tell me.” He paused, his eyes moving between Curry and Suzie, then settling on Curry who had remained standing.

  “I only know what we’ve all worked out, Tom.”

  “Listen,” Tommy took Curry by the shoulder and forced him to sit close to Suzie. “Listen to me. You’ve been shot at and almost blown to pieces, the pair of you. And you, young Shepherd, have been much too sanguine about it. Whoever’s doing this is dead serious about it. They’re not playing around. They mean to kill you.”

  “I’m not sanguine.”

  “You are bloody sanguine. Too soddin
g relaxed, Curry.”

  “I’m about as relaxed as a bayonet, and Tommy it’s just a hint, an idea, a theory. I’ve already told you. COSSAC.”

  “Well tell me again, young Shepherd. Lay it out.”

  Curry looked at his feet, then told him what he’d already carefully laid out for him in Wantage: the connection between Tim Weaving and the biggest single secret in the United Kingdom. “You’d agree that the cellar in Portway House had the feel of a torture chamber?”

  “Of course.”

  “Then follow the logic, Tom. You’re the great detective.”

  “You mean the next front? The invasion of Occupied Europe?”

  “Give the man a toffee apple and a stick of rock. Exactly. What I said before, Tom. People who turn up at COSSAC a couple of times a week have their hearts, minds and every other bloody organ full of the details for the invasion. Planners at the War House have them as well, but they’re split up in little bits. Some know the exact landing places, some know the composition of the troops, others know the overall picture once a break-out’s confirmed. It’s a huge bloody operation. Naval specialists and RAF specialists; how the beaches are going to be supplied, and how petrol and ammunition can be brought over. Jerry would give his eye teeth for a few bits of it … Come to that old Rommel would give anything for details.”

  “And you think some skulking spy beat Weaving to death trying to prise out some of the details?”

  “Absolutely. I’ve already told you, Tommy.”

  “And the woman, the woman in Portway House – Emily Bascombe – she was done away with just because she was there?”

  “Naturally. What’s wrong with that?”

  “You want to know what’s wrong with it?”

  “Yes.”

  “Too bloody melodramatic if you ask me. I mean it doesn’t take the brain of an Oxford geography don to work out that the most straightforward way is to assault France across the Pas de Calais. I suppose you land infantry along a front from where? ten-fifteen miles either side of Calais; bombard ’em from the sea and air, drop gliders and parachute troops a few miles inland, make a bridgehead and break out into France. That’s what I’d do.”

  “Yea, but they’re not asking you, Tommy. There’s a shade more to it than that. The logistics are enormous.”

  Suzie caught a glimpse of Curry’s face, the grey eyes were on fire as he continued. “I’m supposed to have my eye on the security of all those officers working things out down in St James’s Square. One of them goes under a bus, I’m unhappy. One of them dies being put to the question I’m bloody devastated.”

  “Well…” Tommy Livermore sucked his teeth, obviously still unconvinced. “As an old policeman I tend to take a different view.”

  “You mean you think a friend of Captain Robert Bascombe VC has come in, done for the wife’s lover then done for the wife. Dear Bobby, I did it all for you. Lots of love Tiger.”

  “At the Yard,” Detective Chief Superintendent Livermore said slowly, and with a shade of pomp and circumstance, “At the Yard we tend to go for the domestic motive every time.”

  From the doorway, Dennis Free signalled the staff car had arrived for Major Shepherd and Woman Detective Inspector Mountford. A WAAF corporal hung around the hall outside the ante-room, and a couple of RAF officers stood around, one of them a squadron leader, medium height, corn-coloured hair, a flourish of a moustache below a chiselled roman nose. A pilot, handsome with a clipboard and some kind of form that required Curry’s signature. The squadron leader grinned happily at Suzie and said they were all set to go now in a nice deep basso profundo voice that gave her a tiny sweep of goose pimples down the spine, but not for long. There and gone like a wink.

  As they were leaving Tommy quietly said, “Three-oh.”

  “What?”

  “Calibre of the rounds we took out of the car and the mess wall. Point three-zero, which as like as not means it was an M1 Garand. American rifle.”

  “Narrows it down then,” Curry with his hand on the doorknob, grinned broadly. “These days a man can hardly walk the length of his own shadow without tripping over a Yank. So it really narrows it down.”

  * * *

  IT WAS A COUPLE of hours later that Sadler met Linnet in the public bar of The Eagle and Child in St Giles, Oxford. They had both changed into mufti: unusual because you did not easily change into civilian clothes, even off duty. This was how it was in wartime Britain. People had been known to look horrified at the sight of fit and able-bodied men out of uniform. In any case it was not the done thing: a member of HM Forces was, in the main, proud to be a fighting man or woman.

  They sat together in the corner of the saloon bar sipping their weak beer and talking quietly. All the beer in England was pretty weak, it wasn’t simply the prerogative of the Bird and Baby, as countless undergraduates referred to The Eagle and Child.

  “So what happened with the timer?” Sadler asked.

  He could understand four rifle shots missing, but they had worked out the lump of plastique, the detonator and the fuse. Sadler had rung Linnet from the mess as the car pulled away taking Shepherd and Mountford over to the car park beside the sergeants’ mess.

  They knew the drive took approximately three minutes. Make it five, giving them time to walk over to the vehicle. All Linnet had to do was set the timer for five minutes and dump the neat little bomb under the bonnet, using the magnetic clips, before the pair arrived. Plastique bombs were ten a penny at Airborne camps.

  “They stopped,” Linnet said. “They bloody stopped to talk by the edge of the parking area. Stood chatting away as though they had all the time in the world. Then, boom! They were nowhere near it, the buggers.”

  Sadler finished his beer and stared into the glass as though he could read something terrible in the dregs.

  I am the prince of fools, he thought. Madness, all of it, and Tim Weaving had been the beginning. He should’ve remained in control instead of being so damned stupid. And the business on the aerodrome, what had that been about? The shooting and attempted bombing? Initially everything had started on an impulse.

  They had been driving a mile or so following Tim Weaving and passing Portway House Linnet said, “He’s in there. Now, he’s in there.”

  And he thought, why not? and bounded out of the jeep and bounced up the steps … one … two … three … fit and hale and hearty, lifting the heavy brass knocker and the door opened. There was Emily Bascombe, provocative, cocking her hip and wearing that interesting crooked smile, and – “Excuse me, madam, is Colonel Weaving here?”

  Tim stepping into the hall from the right, from the front room, the drawing room if you thought you were as smart as that.

  Tuesday 14th December, 1943. 11.30 in the evening.

  Timmy not at all pleased but polite as ever.

  “What d’you want?”

  “A word, sir.”

  “Better come in. All right Em?”

  “Of course.”

  Close the door behind you but leave it a smidgeon ajar. Nothing ostentatious, just around half-an-inch, then follow old Tim into the front room. The patterned carpet and stained polished border; luxurious blue velvet curtains, ceiling to floor, keeping the light in, well-lined; a three-piece suite covered in matching blue silk; a nest of tables; two standard lamps with cream shades; the picture over the mantelpiece, cows pausing in a rocky stream, behind them the hills, reeds and grass. Two other pictures, head of Erasmus and one pen and ink drawing of some Italian campanile rising from a huddle of buildings by a shoreline. Could be Switzerland not Italy. If not Como, then Magiorre or Lugano.

  “Sit down —.” called him by his name. But Sadler didn’t sit.

  “Well?” Tim Weaving asked, made no pretence that he was displeased, angry even, turning away as Sadler went through the curtains into the bay of the windows, signalled Linnet, turned and walked back.

  Weaving now irritated, like someone with a head full of lice, “What the hell’re you doing? Are you drunk or
something…? Mind that bloody blackout.”

  Emily coming in, quite stunning in a green dress, narrow skirt, pinched waist and buttons down the bodice.

  Tim Weaving turned back to Sadler just as he hit him with the ball of his fist, spun him then chopped hard in the back of his neck, put him down, out for the count.

  Emily starting to scream but Linnet coming in behind her, right arm crooked around the throat, right hand on left bicep, left hand behind the head: you do not have to be strong to use the left hand to get purchase and the right forearm to subdue the throat. A quick death, very fast.

  She was on the floor, lifeless by the time Sadler had the handcuffs on Tim Weaving. Always carried the handcuffs. Some ladies loved them. Got them from a Military Police sergeant when he was doing the EFTS and having a splendid ride round the park with a WAAF flight officer.

  “Somewhere quiet,” he told Linnet sharp, commanding. Linnet found the cellar. Within the half hour the night had become troubled far beyond sanity.

  “Mr Ling! Mr Ling!” the barman of the Bird and Baby, called at them, leaning forward. “The telephone call you were expecting, sir.”

  Linnet disappeared behind the bar, hunched over the telephone, muttering.

  “Beryl’s lost them,” he told Sadler when he returned. “Bloody lost them.”

  Beryl was the name of the WAAF corporal who had driven Curry Shepherd and Suzie Mountford to London. Owed Linnet a favour.

  Chapter Twelve

  CURRY TOLD THE WAAF corporal to drop them in Piccadilly.

  “Anywhere special, sir?” She asked, bright corporal Beryl Collins.

  “Oh,” face screwed up, hesitant. “Oh, over there, near the Regent Palace Hotel.”

  The blackout was more relaxed now, at the end of 1943, unless a warning sounded; certainly easier to drive at night with the glimmer lights in the streets.

  Suzie’s head whipped round in the direction of the Regent Palace and she could see from here there were crowds of people about, the Piccadilly Commandos out in force, with plenty of customers, mainly Yanks. These prostitutes, some only enthusiastic amateurs, did a great trade with the Yanks who were more able to afford the girls than the British soldiers.