Mr. Calder & Mr. Behrens

by Michael Gilbert

  “As you say, it is possible. I suppose that I am the one person who could make the matter a certainty.”

  “Would you be willing to help? I could make all arrangements very quickly. And of course, at no expense to you.”

  “My dear Mr. Calder, if this man should turn out, in fact, to be Stefan Thugutt, the pleasure of meeting him again would be an ample reward in itself.”

  The smile which accompanied these words was one of the coldest, thought Mr. Calder, that he had ever seen, on a human face.

  “I had a message last night from my chief,” said Mr. Behrens.

  He and Ben Thom were sitting together, after breakfast, on a bench in the Warden’s private garden. Bees hummed among the riot of July flowers in the deep borders. Pigeons cooed. The buttery cat strolled across the smooth shaven lawn, keeping one eye on the pigeons.

  “Special Branch are picking up Mitos at his bungalow this morning and taking him to London. He has been told that some question has arisen over his papers. Since he is not operating under diplomatic cover, but is here as a private citizen, he was unable to object. The whole thing has been arranged to give me a chance to make a very careful search of the premises.”

  “You and me,” said Thom.

  “Really, Ben. There’s no need—”

  “You’re not keeping me out of it. After all this cerebral work, a little activity will be a welcome change.”

  “All right,” said Mr. Behrens. “If that’s how you feel about it I’d be glad of your company. Can you pick a lock?”

  “I majored in lock picking. We’ll go in my car.”

  “No. We’ll go by boat. Much the least conspicuous way. A two-oar skiff should get us there in an hour.”

  Mr. Behrens had over-estimated his skill as an oarsman but it was well before midday when he tied up the boat under a willow tree fifty yards short of the Mitos bungalow.

  “On foot from here,” said Mr. Behrens. “We can keep under cover until we get to the garden.”

  The bungalow was an isolated one, approached on the landward side by a long, dusty side road. The lawn sloped down to the river. On the other side the bank was wild and overgrown.

  “A perfect pitch for a contact job,” said Thom. They walked up the path together. They were twenty yards from the building when Mr. Behrens stopped.

  “I’m not absolutely certain,” said Mr. Behrens, “but I did think I saw the curtain in that window move a fraction.”

  “Then clearly the first thing to do,” said Thom, “is to ring the bell. If there’s someone there, they answer the door and we’re two boat-trippers who forgot to bring any water for their kettle, and don’t trust river water. OK?”

  “That seems sound,” said Mr. Behrens.

  The back of the bungalow was a glassed-in verandah. There was no bell by the door but there was a knocker. Mr. Behrens executed a lengthy and lively tattoo on it. Nothing happened.

  Professor Thom was already busy with a selection of thin steel spikes. Some had spatulate tips, some ended in hooks. He handled them with the familiarity and firmness of a surgeon. The lock was evidently more complicated than he had expected. “A curious lock to find on the back door of an innocent bungalow,” he said to Mr. Behrens. In three minutes he had it opened and they stepped inside.

  The verandah was full of stored heat and silence. A step led up to an inner door. This was unlocked. Mr. Behrens opened it, stepped inside and stopped.

  “Something wrong?” said Professor Thom.

  “Not really,” said Mr. Behrens.

  Mr. Calder was seated on the sofa with a stranger beside him.

  “Allow me to introduce my friend,” said Mr. Calder. “Tadeus Rek, of Danzig. Mr. Behrens. And—?”

  “Professor Ebenezer Thom of Columbia University.”

  “I think,” said Mr. Calder a little later, “that it’s time we joined up the two sides of this affair. Tadeus has been very useful to us already. He identified Michael Mitos, from a photograph, as a minor functionary in Russian Intelligence. An unimportant intellectual who was probably blackmailed into coming to England. He is not a very brave man. His credentials are being examined. The supposition is that he was acting as link-man to someone much more important.”

  “That someone,” said Mr. Behrens, “being Sir Boris Wykes.”

  “That we shall shortly find out. A message has been conveyed to a certain quarter – I said that Mitos was not very brave. If what we suspect is correct, it should result in someone attempting to contact Mitos.”

  “Coming here, you mean?” said Professor Thom. There was a look in his eye which seemed to suggest that further activity would not be displeasing to him.

  “That is the supposition. The message stressed that a contact was urgent, but it might not be effective before tomorrow. Fortunately there is plenty of food in the house. However, I suggest”— he was looking at Mr. Behrens as he said this —“that a reception committee of four might be excessive.”

  “I think you’re right,” said Mr. Behrens slowly. “Besides, Ben, we must bear in mind we have hired our boat by the hour. A substantial monetary penalty will be exacted if we keep it out over night.”

  “Very well,” said Professor Thom reluctantly. “If that’s what you think would be best.”

  Rek said, with the justifiable pride of one employing a colloquialism in a foreign tongue, “That’s the way the cookie crumbles, Professor.”

  Sir Boris Wykes, paddling his canoe expertly down the smooth reaches of the Cam, was not unduly alarmed. Mitos was inclined to panic. He had asked, more than once, for him to be replaced by a more reliable operator but it had been difficult to find anyone with the precise qualifications.

  The message had reached him, through established channels, and verified by the current code-word, at five o’clock on the previous afternoon. He gathered that it was something to do with Mitos’ papers. It had mentioned urgency. Wykes was too old a hand to be hurried.

  Fortunately he had already mentioned to one or two friends that he was planning to take a boat out on the following afternoon and he had adhered to this timetable.

  As he came round the bend he saw the familiar figure seated on the landing stage, a fishing rod in his hand and the same floppy old sunhat on his head. So! The authorities had not detained Mitos. Another false alarm.

  Three swift strokes with the paddle drove the canoe towards the stage. The fisherman looked up.

  A moment of paralysed shock.

  The man was a stranger. Or was he? He was certainly not Mitos.

  “My name is Rek,” said the fisherman. “Tadeus Rek.” One brown and muscular hand had grasped the edge of the canoe. “We met once or twice, no more I think, in 1946 at Cracow. On the other hand, you knew my brother, Andreas, rather well. It was on account of your information that he was shot. That makes what we have to do much easier.”

  Wykes fended off wildly from the landing stage, hitting at Rek’s hand with the paddle. It was an ineffective gesture. Mr. Calder had come up behind him, and was holding the other end of the canoe firmly.

  “First Pitt-Hammersley,” said the Warden. “Now Mitos. We are the playthings of fate.” He was alone in his study with Mr. Behrens.

  “I learn this morning that the authorities have not only detained Mitos, they have refused to allow him out of custody pending deportation. Is this a police state? Is there nothing we can do?”

  “You could appeal to the Home Secretary,” said Mr. Behrens, but he said it without much confidence.

  The Warden’s eye fell on the morning paper that Mr. Behrens had put down. “Boating Tragedy,” said the headline, “Eminent Scientist Feared Drowned. A canoe, which had been hired on the previous afternoon by Sir Boris Wykes, the Government scientist in charge of the East Coast Early Warning System, was found this morning floating bottom up in the Cam five miles below Cambridge. The body of the canoeist has not been recovered. That stretch of the river is notorious for its underwater weed bed which is known to have trappe
d quite strong swimmers. The river above the point where the canoe was found is being dragged.”

  Mr. Behrens thought it very unlikely that the body would be recovered.

  “I shall have to put up a notice,” the Warden made a note on his pad, “urging students not to go boating single-handed. I’ve done so before, but young people take little notice of warnings.” He reverted to his original grievance. “I suppose,” he said to Mr. Behrens, “that you wouldn’t care – just as a temporary measure – to take over Pitt-Hammersley’s lectures? I understand you are something of an expert on the subjects that he covered.”

  “I’m afraid not, Warden,” said Mr. Behrens. “I’d like to help, but I’ve come to the reluctant conclusion that the science of linguistics is too dangerous to be meddled with by amateurs.”

  10

  The Killing of Michael Finnegan

  “They burned him to death,” said Elfe. He said it without any attempt to soften the meaning of what he was saying. “He was almost certainly alive when they dumped him in the car and set fire to it.”

  Deputy Assistant Commissioner Elfe had a long, sad face and grey hair. In the twenty years that he had been head of the Special Branch he had seen more brutality, more treachery, more fanaticism, more hatred than had any of his predecessors in war or in peace. Twice he had tried to retire, and twice had been persuaded to stay.

  “He couldn’t have put up much of a fight,” said Mr. Calder, “only having one arm and one and a half legs.”

  They were talking about Michael Finnegan, whose charred carcass had been found in a burnt-out stolen car in one of the lonelier parts of Hampstead Heath. Finnegan had been a lieutenant in the Marines until he had blown off his right arm and parts of his right leg whilst defusing a new type of anti-personnel mine. During his long convalescence his wife Sheilagh, had held the home together, supplementing Michael’s disability pension by working as a secretary. Then Finnegan had taught himself to write left-handed, and had gained a reputation, and a reasonable amount of cash for his articles; first only in service journals, but later in the national press, where he had constituted himself a commentator on men and affairs.

  “It’s odd,” as Mr. Behrens once observed, “you’d think that he’d be a militant chauvinist. Actually he seems to be a moderate and a pacifist. It was Finnegan who started arguing that we ought to withdraw our troops from Ireland. That was long before the IRA made it one of the main planks in their platform.”

  “You can never tell how a serious injury will affect a man,” said

  Mr. Calder. This was, of course, before he had become professionally involved with Michael Finnegan.

  “For the last year you’ve been acting as his runner, haven’t you?” said Elfe. “You must have got to know him well.”

  “Him and his wife,” said Mr. Calder. “They were a great couple.” He thought about the unremarkable house at Banstead with its tiny flower garden in front and its rather larger kitchen garden at the back, both of which Michael Finnegan tended one-armed, hobbling down between whiles for a pint at the local. A respected man with many friends, and acquaintances, none of whom knew that he was playing a lonely, patient, dangerous game. His articles in the papers, his casual contacts, letters to old friends in Ireland, conversations with new friends in the pub, all had been slanted towards a predetermined end.

  The fact was that the shape of the IRA’s activities in England was changing, a change which had been forced on them by the systematic penetration of their English groups. Now, when an act of terrorism was planned, the operators came from Ireland to carry it out, departing as soon as it was done. They travelled a roundabout route, via Morocco or Tunis, entering England from France or Belgium and returning by the same way. Explosives, detonators and other material for the job came separately, and in advance. Their one essential requirement was an operational base where materials could be stored and the operators could lodge for the few days needed for the job.

  It was to hold out his house as such a safe base that every move in Michael Finnegan’s life had been planned.

  “We agreed,” said Mr. Calder, “that as far as possible, Michael should have no direct contacts of any sort with the security forces. What the Department did was to lease a house which had a good view, from its front windows, of Michael’s back gate. They installed one of their pensioners in it, old Mrs. Lovelock—”

  “Minnie Lovelock?” said Elfe. “She used to type for me forty years ago. I was terrified of her, even then.”

  “All she had to do was to keep Michael’s kitchen window cill under observation at certain hours. There was a simple code of signals. A flower pot meant the arrival of explosives or arms. One or more milk bottles signalled the arrival of that number of operators. And the house gave us one further advantage. Minnie put it about that she had sublet a room on the first floor to a commercial gentleman who kept his samples there, and occasionally put up there for the night. For the last year the commercial gent was me. I was able to slip out, after dark, up the garden path and in at the back door. I tried to go at least once a month. My ostensible job was to collect any information Michael might have for us. In fact, I believe my visits kept him sane. We used to talk for hours. He liked to hear the gossip, all about the inter-departmental feuds, and funny stories about the Minister.”

  “And about the head of the Special Branch?”

  “Oh, certainly. He particularly enjoyed the story of how two of your men tried to arrest each other.”

  Elfe grunted and said, “Go on.”

  “And there was one further advantage. Michael had a key of this room. In a serious emergency he could deposit a message – after dark, of course – or even use it as an escape hatch for Sheilagh and himself.”

  “Did his wife know what he was up to?”

  “She had to be told something, if only to explain my visits. Our cover story was that Michael was gathering information about subversion in the docks. This was plausible, as he’d done an Intelligence job in the Marines. She may have suspected that it was more than that. She never interfered. She’s a grand girl.”

  Elfe said, “Yes.” And after a pause, “Yes. That’s really what I wanted to tell you. I’ve had a word with your chief. He agrees with me. This is a job we can’t use you in.”

  “Oh,” said Mr. Calder coldly. “Why not?”

  “Because you’d feel yourself personally involved. You’d be unable to be sufficiently dispassionate about it. You knew Finnegan and his wife far too well.”

  Mr. Calder thought about that. If Fortescue had backed the prohibition it would be little use kicking. He said, “I suppose we are doing something about it.”

  “Of course. Superintendent Outram and Sergeant Fallows are handling it. They’re both members of the AT squad, and very capable operators.”

  “I know Tom Outram,” said Mr. Calder. “He’s a sound man. I’ll promise not to get under his feet. But I’m already marginally involved. If he wants to question Sheilagh he’ll have to do it at my cottage. I moved her straight down there as soon as I heard the news. Gave her a strong sleeping pill and put her to bed.”

  “They wondered where she’d disappeared to. I’ll tell them she’s living with you.”

  “If you put it quite like that,” said Mr. Calder, “it might be misunderstood. She’s being chaperoned, by Rasselas.”

  “I think,” said Superintendent Outram, “that we’d better see Mrs. Finnegan alone. That is, if you don’t mind.”

  He and Sergeant Fallows had driven out to Mr. Calder’s cottage, which was built on a shoulder of the North Downs above Lamperdown in Kent.

  “I don’t mind,” said Mr. Calder. “But you’ll have to look out for Rasselas.”

  “Your dog?”

  “Yes. Mrs. Finnegan’s still in a state of shock, and Rasselas is very worried about it. The postman said something sharp to her – not meaning any harm at all – and he went for him. Luckily I was there and I was able to stop him.”

  “Could
n’t we see her without Rasselas?”

  “I wouldn’t care to try and shift him.”

  Outram thought about it. Then he said, “Then I think you’d better sit in with us.”

  “I think that might be wise,” said Mr. Calder gravely.

  Sheilagh Finnegan had black hair and a white face out of which looked eyes of startling Irish blue. Her mouth was thin and tight and angry. It was clear that she was under stress. When Outram and Fallows came in she took one look at them and jerked as though an electric shock had gone through her.

  Rasselas, who was stretched out on the floor beside her, raised his head and regarded the two men thoughtfully.

  “Just like he was measuring us for a coffin,” said Fallows afterwards.

  Mr. Calder sat on the sofa, and put one hand on the dog’s head.

  It took Outram fifteen minutes of patient, low-keyed questioning to discover that Mrs. Finnegan could tell him very little. Her husband, she said, had suggested that she needed a break, and had arranged for her to spend a week in a small private hotel at Folkestone. She wasn’t sorry to agree because she hadn’t had a real holiday in the last three or four years.

  Outram nodded sympathetically. Had the holiday been fixed suddenly? Out of the blue, like? Sheilagh gave more attention to this than she had to some of the earlier questions. She said, “We’d often talked about it before. Michael knew I had friends at Folkestone.”

  “But on this occasion it was your husband who suggested it? How long before you left?”

  “Two or three days.”

  “Then it was fairly sudden.”

  “Fairly sudden, yes.”

  “Did he give any particular reason? Had he had an unexpected message? Something like that.”