The Mathematical Bridge

by Jim Kelly

  Alone now, on the street corner, his charge safely inside the college walls, Brooke saw a constable heading his way. ‘Sir. Police box in St Andrew’s Passage. There’s a call.’ The blue box was almost hidden down a side alley. The caller was the duty sergeant at the Spinning House: a water bailiff at Upware, ten miles north of the city, had spotted the Elsie, moored two miles off the main river on Reach Lode. He’d got close enough to confirm the boat’s identity, then fled back to a riverside pub with a phone. He awaited instructions.

  Brooke checked his watch. He had two hours before the prince emerged for his next engagement. Deprived of Edison and use of the Wasp, he ran down to the river at the Great Bridge where the County force had stationed its patrol launch, on call for the duration of the prince’s visit. He waved his warrant card, effected a requisition, and ordered it north along the river at speed. They left a wake, passing through the locks at Jesus and Baits Bite, then the fen-edge villages. To the east of the river lay the Lode Country, an area of fenland bisected by straight cuts, which had once allowed boats to ferry goods from higher ground to the main river. The draining of the Fens had seen the soil shrink back, leaving the lodes high above the landscape they drained, each perched on Mississippi levees. It was a wilderness, even by fen standards. Bodart, if she’d decided to abandon the boat and slip away, could not have found a more desolate spot. Or was she still on board?

  Upware, a collection of a few houses around a thatched pub, called the Five Miles From Anywhere, stood on the river beside the lock entrance to Reach Lode. The water bailiff, a squat, bustling man with a bedraggled coat, took Brooke on by foot, picking up the path beside the lode, high on the bank. The water itself was sluggish and stank of rotting peat. On the far side wild horses stood, heads down, chewing grass revealed by the melting snow. In summer the boats crowded the banks here, but in winter only the hardy remained – the locals called them river gypsies. A few were dotted along the path, before even they petered out. Then, in the far distance, around a subtle deviation in the arrow-straight flight of the channel, they saw the Elsie.

  Brooke held back, fifty yards distant. The boat was neatly moored, a series of wooden planks protecting its paintwork from the wooden dock. She was a forty-footer, in black and gold. From the stovepipe smoke drifted, revealing a fire within. At the stern, the cockpit and entrance door were neat and tidy, newly painted, shipshape. A bilge pump patiently throbbed, spilling water out by the rudder, creating a current which must, Brooke realised, have helped keep the boat ice-free in the cold snap.

  Brooke, short of time, decided to act. Recovering the RADAR unit was a priority. Was it on board? He called out a catch-all ‘Hallo!’, then approached, stepping aboard, and felt the subtle stomach-turning gulp of the boat shifting in its watery bed. Kneeling, he looked inside. The saloon contained a series of bookcases, a small desk, cabinets for papers. The stove was in the Bavarian style, with blue tiles and a wedding-cake design of layers, tapering by steps to a finial. A remarkable object, imported, no doubt. A cat made him jump, appearing on the sill inside, pressing its fur flat against the thick glass.

  The water bailiff produced a jemmy and they sprung the lock on the cabin door. Methodically, starting at the prow, Brooke searched the boat, making sure to check the two sets of bilges. One of Rafe Forbes’s RADAR units was not an easy item to conceal. Twenty minutes later he was pretty certain that Bodart had fled with her prize.

  Climbing back onto dry land he found the bailiff smoking, an old dog at his heels, which must have been trailing them on arthritic legs. The cat sat on the roof of the boat.

  ‘Cat’s a pedigree,’ said the waterman. ‘Siamese. In his day the dog would have had her like that.’ He snapped his fingers.

  ‘Thanks for the call,’ said Brooke. ‘We could have missed her for months.’ It was true. The narrow channel was a mile from the main river at this point, and the slight dogleg meant the boat was hidden, despite the open country.

  ‘It’s me job,’ said the bailiff bluntly. ‘Boats coming upriver reckon they’re searching every vessel at Denver. That right? What they after?’

  ‘Who said that?’ asked Brooke.

  ‘Every skipper you talk to. Downriver too, they reckon. One story says there’s a spy trying to get out to sea. Armed too, and dangerous. This his boat, is it?’

  ‘Gossip’s a wonderful thing,’ said Brooke. ‘Best stick to facts. We’re looking for a woman, middle-aged, solid, a German accent certainly – but she’s Austrian. Keep your eyes open for us. Can you put out the word – north and south?’

  The bailiff nodded.

  Brooke was fifty yards from the boat on his way back when the obvious question struck him: why leave the stove alight? It created smoke, and made it look as if someone was on board.

  Walking back, he used a metal toolset on the small grate to swing open the stove door. Inside, smouldering, was a thick book of maps and a folded set of charts. Brooke got the embers out into a metal bucket and then laid them in a line on a damp tarpaulin on the bank. Various German hieroglyphs dotted a series of Ordnance Survey maps of the upper river, the Wash and the north Norfolk coast. The charts covered the German Ocean.

  Brooke adjusted his hat and tried to put himself in Bodart’s shoes. She would have taken care to pick up the river talk. If she’d heard the way ahead was blocked it would explain her decision to lay up the Elsie. Burning her maps seemed to signal a desperate change of plan. But where had she gone? Back downriver to the city perhaps, rather than risking open country? It was a ten-mile hike, but she could have done it under cover of night. Desperate, thwarted, friendless – did she have any hope left?

  CHAPTER FIFTY-SIX

  An hour later Brooke was on the touchline watching football on Parker’s Piece, on a field cleared of snow and on a mat of straw and mud. According to the porter at Trinity, ‘a light lunch’ had involved several rounds of Brandy Alexander, an officers’ mess concoction of brandy, champagne and sugar cubes, which was the prince’s favourite. He’d then enjoyed a boisterous walk through town, cheered on, and now stood smoking a large cigar as the game unfolded in a series of crunching tackles and barely controlled mob violence. The precise position of the ball appeared to be of passing relevance to the tactics.

  Brooke, who’d taken up position on the opposite side of the pitch to his charge, learnt that the teams represented the university on one hand, the London Regiment on the other, and that the royal visitor had indicated that both teams would be treated to tea at Trinity after the final whistle. Brooke suspected that this was another euphemism for a bout of hard liquor. An air of a public holiday hung over the field, as most of the thousand-strong crowd were in uniform and had been given leave to visit the local pubs before kick-off. A hundred children – all boys – watched from behind one of the goals, waving flags and cheering wildly.

  Brooke observed the prince. It was difficult to avoid the conclusion that he was happier surrounded by soldiers than academics, or his entourage: a dour group of men in long coats who stamped their feet in the slush and smoked, passing silver cigarette cases up and down the line. The Borough’s tallest constable had been assigned to act as a nominal royal bodyguard and stood at the prince’s shoulder.

  The game had become a mud bath, the teams indistinguishable; a delighted prince, abandoning strict neutrality, urged on the soldiers. The final whistle brought a huge cheer and both teams were dragged into lines to meet the guest of honour, who was then escorted to his car, having duly invited the players back for refreshments. Brooke set off across the grass, leading both teams in a long, straggling line of steaming athletes. The players, no doubt anticipating the warmth, food and drink, sang in the narrow streets. The celebratory tone was infectious. A crowd, which had reappeared at the college gates, cheered them out of sight through the gate.

  They had beaten the royal car back to Trinity by five minutes, as it executed a roundabout route dictated by security, again avoiding the obvious bridges. The open staff car eventua
lly crept down the cobbled street and the prince slipped from view, leaving a trail of rich cigar smoke on the air. Brooke checked his watch: it was four o’clock precisely. A hint of dusk was in the sky, and the lights of the porters’ lodge were bright and welcoming. Prince Henry was due to walk out for dinner at Queens’ at six.

  Brooke lit a cigarette and sat on the wall as the crowd dispersed. To one side of the great gate a bay window extended from an upstairs room. This, by legend, had been Isaac Newton’s room, and below on the lawn stood an apple tree grown from a seed from the one in his country garden, from which the fruit had fallen and begotten the law of gravity, and much else. Brooke’s father had been rather sniffy about this story, pointing out that there were other trees – notably in the city’s Botanic Garden – which had been grown from a graft of the roots of the original. These trees were exact replicas of the original, biological twins rather than hybrids. It struck Brooke that it was in the nature of science that one day, somewhere, someone, would try to do the same with an animal – a sheep perhaps, or a guinea pig. It was a disturbing vision.

  Which made him think of Augustine Bodart and her sweet peas. He’d left further instructions with the Spinning House to widen the search for the fugitive. In particular he’d ordered southbound trains searched before they left for London. Davison College had provided a picture of Bodart from the files. Brooke was determined to stop the Austrian reaching anyone who might be able to spirit the RADAR unit out of the country. Might she know how to contact other agents in the capital?

  He found it hard to feel sympathy for her plight. No doubt her commitment to eugenics went back to her student days at Heidelberg. The sophistication of her undercover work in Cambridge hinted at considerable preparation. She’d been at Davison for nearly three years. She was undoubtedly an agent of the Abwehr, the German intelligence service. But for the river gossip they’d have nabbed her at Denver Sluice.

  The clocks chimed the hour and he saw Edison, half running down Trinity Street.

  Breathless, he bent once at the waist and then straightened. ‘Sir. The child in the morgue, it isn’t Sean Flynn.’

  ‘It has to be,’ said Brooke, standing. A murder of crows clattered out of the trees by the gatehouse and wheeled overhead in the evening sky.

  ‘Mother’s certain. She fainted first time, so we had to wait. But she’s had a second look, and then the husband, too. No doubts.’

  Brooke tried to calculate the repercussions of the news. If the body wasn’t Sean Flynn’s, whose was it? He saw the faces of children, their suitcases and labels, and Father Ward, distraught that one of the evacuees was missing.

  ‘They’re both pretty shocked,’ said Edison. ‘They’ve gone back to their room at the Bull. I said we’d find their boy, but where do we start?’

  Brooke, calculating, thought he already had part of the answer: he knew where to find Sean Flynn. And he knew he was alive. What remained elusive was the motive behind the subterfuge.

  ‘We need to get everyone together at St Alban’s,’ he said. ‘All the evacuees, the staff, everyone. The priest too, and the housekeeper. Tomorrow, if we can. Get a message to the school, Edison, and the church.’

  He stood, quickly lighting a fresh cigarette. ‘For now, let’s get Prince Henry safely over the city boundary and off our manor. Then we can concentrate on the child.’

  ‘And a call from Brandon, sir. The reed-cutter at Hornsea rang the station to say he’s lost his boat. Moored down by the towpath he says. A rowboat. Looks like our man Smith is a planner alright. Oars were stashed in the barn, and they’ve gone too, so it looks like he had it all worked out. Now he’s got the bomb, and a boat.’

  CHAPTER FIFTY-SEVEN

  Brooke and Edison stood together in the gathering shadows of the great gate. They were still deep in conversation on the subject of Smith’s possible targets when one of Prince Henry’s equerries, half running from the porters’ lodge, tripped on the cobbles, spilling a suitcase of clothes across the flagstones. Out it all came, the regalia of a collegiate formal dinner: black tie, dinner jacket, polished shoes, a cummerbund and a pair of daring braces in gold and blue, the royal soldier’s regimental colours.

  Brooke helped him repack and showed his warrant. ‘Change of plan?’

  ‘His Royal Highness likes to call it “the element of surprise”,’ said the man, in obvious exasperation. ‘They’ve all had a few drinks. The soldiers have gone, of course, back to barracks. But the students are in their cups. Did I say a few drinks? Well, a few more drinks. Someone’s suggested a steeplechase along the riverbank, over the meadows, over the styles, to Queens’. Prince Henry’s borrowed some kit and they’re setting off, it’s like the Berkshire Hunt. They want to catch the light before it goes. One of the students has got a horn. Another one’s volunteered to be the fox. I’ve to tell the porter at Queens’ they’ll arrive by the back way, over the wooden bridge. I’d better go.’

  He set off, and as if on cue they heard a hunting horn on the breeze. Even if they ran the long way round via the water meadows, the hunt would be over the bridge in twenty minutes, possibly less. There was no catching them now.

  Brooke thought of the child in the sack floating downriver to its death, sweeping under the Mathematical Bridge. He didn’t like the sense that fate was contriving a circular narrative, a story that was being drawn back to its beginning.

  ‘Go with him, Edison,’ said Brooke, pointing at the retreating equerry. ‘Try and get a message down to the bridge. If they can reroute them over Silver Street, do it. There’s no real risk – it’s out of the blue, Smith couldn’t have known. But let’s play it safe.’

  Edison ran, gaining on the fleeing equerry with admirable pace.

  Brooke heard the hunting horn a second time, the sound floating over the college roofs from the meadows beyond; the yells of the runners, a mimic adding the raucous bark of a beagle, an impersonation greeted by laughter, and cheers, and shouts quickly taken up: To the bridge! Then the sound of the pursuit faded quickly, lost beyond the college buildings and the riverside willows.

  A plan, which arrived fully formed in Brooke’s mind, propelled him along the street, then down Garret Hostel Lane to the river. He still had the key to the Michaelhouse college punt, donated by Doric. The wharf lay at the end, beyond a locked door, to which he also had the key because it was from this secret place that he swam on summer nights. The door lock turned smoothly, but the padlock on the boat was still stubborn, and as he applied force he heard the hunting horn again, very close, and in the dusk on the west bank he saw them for the first time, white shirts in the shadows, a bedraggled line, heading south, appearing, then reappearing, as they measured a line of poplars. The joker’s fake bark had been taken up by the mob, a perfect counterpoint to the horn.

  Freeing the iron lock at last, Brooke used a foot on the stone wharf to propel the punt out into the stream. While his body steered the fragile craft, his mind sought reassurance. It was impossible for Smith to have anticipated the change of route. But the anxiety would not abate: something, some small detail, had eluded Brooke’s calculations.

  Ice nudged the boat, but the downstream current was limp, so he made good headway, standing in the bow, using the pole, grounding it in the gravel, pushing upstream. The long, slow bend of the river unfurled and the Mathematical Bridge came into sight. A crowd, no doubt alerted by telephone by friends at Trinity, had gathered, bunched at either end of the graceful curve, but lining the rail as well so that the runners would have to squeeze through as they ran over the water. At this point the bank to the west was no higher than a foot, giving Brooke a clear view of the hunting party, twenty men wearing shorts in pursuit of a student with a red sash. They were approaching the bridge at speed.

  Ahead, upriver, a man sat in a rowing boat in midstream, fifty yards from the bridge, his back to Brooke. This single image transformed the scene. Time ticked slowly, as if the world was winding down. In his left hand the man held a loop of wire, which dro
pped into the water and was gone. His right hand was furiously at work at some mechanism unseen in the boat. His build, the neat bullet-like head, but especially the easy languid strength, told Brooke it was Joe Smith. Brooke hadn’t known the prince would run this way; how had Smith?

  He heard hunting cries on the wind. The approaching front runner – the fox – was fifty yards from the bridge.

  Kneeling in his boat, Smith had set aside the wire and now worked at something with dexterity, not power. The tension in the shoulders, the stooped head, was electric.

  The red-sashed student clattered over the bridge to the cheer of the crowd. The following group set up a volley of cries, their pace slackened, embroiled in a melee of back-slapping, until they came to a halt, pushing forward to cross the river. Brooke thought he caught sight of the prince, in a cluster at the tail.

  Smith stood in the boat, expertly rebalancing himself as it rocked, the wire trailing from his left hand. In the half-second he had left to make a decision Brooke saw a second thin wire, this one dropping from the bridge into the bankside shallows.

  The picture was complete. The fleeting doubt, How did he know?, was brushed aside.

  The steeplechasers began to jog over the bridge.

  If he shouted, Smith might detonate the bomb.

  Brooke levelled the pistol, steadied his right hand with his left, took aim and shot him in the back; and there it was: the fleshy lethal thud of the bullet going home.