SS-GB

by Len Deighton

  ‘I think so,’ said Sir Robert. ‘I’m sorry, Bernard, but I couldn’t allow it.’ There was a long silence in the room; the discussion was at an end.

  ‘Well, let me know,’ said Douglas. ‘I’ll protect him as far as I can, of course.’

  Mayhew put the pack of cards together decisively. ‘I think that’s enough.’

  Douglas looked at his watch. ‘I should be going.’

  ‘Just a moment,’ Sir Robert said. ‘These gentlemen owe us money.’

  A handful of pennies were exchanged. Douglas said goodnight to Sir Robert and Bernard and Mayhew walked with him along the dark corridor. They stood at the top of the staircase. ‘I’ll say goodnight, Archer,’ he said but he stood as if there was something else.

  ‘You haven’t asked me to let up on the Shepherd Market murder investigation,’ said Douglas.

  Mayhew flinched. ‘It would be a good thing for all concerned,’ said Mayhew.

  ‘Including me?’

  ‘In the long run, yes.’ He smiled. ‘You knew what I was going to say?’

  ‘Half the population of London seem to be concerned lest I solve that murder. Why should you be an exception?’

  Mayhew’s smile was fixed on his face like a cheap papier-mâché mask. ‘Well, think about it, Archer,’ he said.

  ‘I already have,’ said Douglas. ‘Goodnight.’ He did not offer to shake hands.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Douglas was in the car with Barbara Barga before they had exchanged more than a brief greeting and a circumspect hug. She was not drunk, or even under the influence as the English courts define it, but she was relaxed, and cat-like, inclined to smile at jokes that she did not reveal. ‘Wasn’t that a swell party?’

  ‘Parties like that are an acquired taste.’

  ‘Then I’ve acquired it,’ she said. ‘Even as we were leaving, the waiters were bringing Moët by the case, and those one-pound size tins of beluga caviar. Some style those guys have.’

  ‘You could as well say Al Capone had style.’

  ‘But honey, I did say that. I did a two-part feature story for Saturday Evening Post a year or more back. I located two old-time beer-barons in Gary, Indiana – that’s just across the stateline from Chicago, onetime haven for the hoodlums…and these guys gave me a great story. And I said that Al Capone had style – I actually said that.’ She tugged at Douglas’s sleeve with that earnest determination to be understood and believed, that so often comes with an extra few drinks.

  Douglas looked out of the window of the car. He resented the way in which Garin and Shetland had provided a car-service for the guests, and resented the influence that had provided for the cars the ‘Essential Service’ windscreen stickers that enabled them to break curfew. He resented the way that he’d had to revise his opinion about Garin and Shetland – shameless collaborators and crooks – and come to terms with the fact that they were respected and admired by Mayhew and Sir Robert, and his old friend Bernard. Only slowly could he bring himself to modify that resentment. Hearing Barbara Barga praising the party did nothing to help.

  ‘Don’t be sore,’ she said, reaching out a hand from where she was slumped in the corner of the soft leather seat. ‘Don’t let Al Capone come between us.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ said Douglas. He turned just as she leaned forward. They collided.

  ‘Ouch!’ she said and rubbed her nose. The sudden and unexpected physical contact reawakened in Douglas a mixture of urgency, awkwardness, ardency and despair that he had not known since the calf-love of his schooldays.

  The car was heading towards Belgravia. ‘This is not the way to the Dorchester,’ said Douglas.

  ‘Do you have to be a cop twenty-four hours every day? I’ve rented a little town house near Belgrave Square. It belongs to friends who’ve returned to Missouri for three months, and didn’t want to leave it empty. Do you know they’ve had fourteen robberies in that tiny mews in the last three months.’

  ‘Well don’t hold me personally responsible for all the crime in London,’ said Douglas clumsily. It had always been like this when he was young; the girls he wanted most were the ones he offended and with whom he made a fool of himself.

  ‘I’d ask you in for a drink,’ she said, ‘but they asked us all to send the cars back as soon as possible for the other guests.’

  Douglas reached across her and opened the door before the driver could do so. ‘No problem about that – stay where you are, driver! – I can phone for a car from the Yard.’ He got out with her.

  ‘My researcher says that having access to a car in this town is a sign of favour – you must be an important man at Scotland Yard.’ She got the keys from her handbag.

  ‘Everyone keeps telling me I am,’ said Douglas. He looked at the tiny mews house; cobbled forecourt and ivy on the walls. A few years ago they were considered only just good enough for coachmen or chauffeurs; now, with the coach-houses converted to sitting-rooms, such places were becoming chic.

  Once inside she switched on the lights one by one. Douglas admired the paintwork and panelling, all done with a craftsmanship that was fast disappearing – and the furnishings too. It wasn’t to his taste – huge Chinese vases converted into table lamps, white moquette on the floor and a Persian carpet on the wall – but it was undeniably comfortable. ‘What does your friend from Missouri do for a living?’ said Douglas. ‘Run an opium den?’

  ‘You’re a cruel bastard,’ she said affably.

  ‘Well it’s all very luxurious.’ He took off his overcoat.

  She had not removed her coat and now she turned up the fur collar.

  ‘Do you know the origin of the word mews?’ she asked, and hurried on before he could spoil the obvious pleasure she got from telling him. ‘It means a cage for hawks. In the olden days a mews was where the royal hunting birds were kept.’

  ‘I didn’t know that,’ he said.

  She smiled. Just for one moment he saw the little girl she once was; smiling proudly at some word of praise. He loved that little girl and the clever, and beautiful, young woman she’d become and for the first time, he dared to think she might feel the same way about him.

  He didn’t dwell upon the thought. He turned away and studied the books on the shelf, forcing himself to read the titles and exclude all else from his mind. Encyclopaedia Britannica, 14th edition, four guidebooks to London, one of them with a cracked spine, a large Sears Roebuck Catalog with more than a dozen page-markers visible, a Manhattan telephone directory, a small atlas and a pocket-size English dictionary with a companion volume German one. He felt her watching him, but he did not turn round. He looked at the typewriter on a small table by the fire. Alongside it, a half-used packet of lightweight paper, held down by a Rolleiflex camera, a pot of face-cream and a dozen hairpins. The waste basket was half-filled with screwed-up sheets of typing paper.

  ‘Matches?’ He went to help her.

  ‘You Brits don’t feel the cold, do you?’ They were very close now, crouching together at the fireplace. He could almost feel the warmth of her body. She was looking at him, perhaps trying to see why he didn’t feel the cold. She got to her feet, and stepped back from him. ‘There’s no heat here,’ she said.

  He knew she meant central heating. He smiled. He turned the tap and lit the gas. There was a loud noise as it ignited. He stood up.

  ‘In my country,’ she added quickly, ‘even a blue-collar worker wants something better than a cold-water walk-up, with fixed-point heating.’ She stepped back again and stood very still. For a moment he was about to put his arms round her but she shivered and turned away, and went through the swing doors into the adjoining kitchen.

  ‘Gee, there were some terrible people there tonight,’ she said from the kitchen.

  Douglas followed her. ‘That’s the trouble with wars,’ he said.

  ‘You can say that again. I was in Catalonia and in Madrid. That’s the way it goes, believe me. Blackshirts, redshirts, brownshirts; the same lousy crooks are trying to take o
ver the world. I’ve seen those same sort of greedy-eyed politicians from the Chaco to Addis Ababa.’

  ‘That sounds like a lot of wars.’

  ‘I was eighteen when my paper sent me down to Paraguay, to cover the fighting in Chaco. Since then I’ve sent stories from China, Ethiopia, Spain, and last year I was in Abbeville when the German Panzer Divisions arrived.’

  ‘It’s a strange job for a woman,’ said Douglas.

  ‘Don’t be an English stuffed shirt.’ She turned on the water-tap. The pipes squealed and the metal drummed as she filled the percolator. She got a tin of coffee from the cupboard. ‘I’ve got real coffee. What would you say to that, Superintendent?’

  ‘You went to a war when you were only eighteen?’ said Douglas. ‘What did your father say?’

  ‘He owned the newspaper.’

  She looked up at him and smiled. He looked back at her and stared calmly into her eyes. Until then, the prospect had been nothing more than a flirtation, or at the most a brief affair. It would not be the first time she’d exploited some influential official in some war-torn land for the sake of her job. But now she found the tables turned; she was beginning to like this gentlemanly English cop in ways over which she had no control.

  She tried all the tactics that had worked so well before. She remembered all the other lousy selfish foreign lovers she’d had. She concentrated upon the latter part of her failed marriage, the misery of the break-up, and the bitterness of the divorce. But it was no good; this man was different. ‘Do you take sugar, Superintendent?’ Or was it just that she was more vulnerable, lonelier in this godforsaken miserable city than she’d ever been before?

  ‘Douglas,’ he said. ‘People are calling me Douglas now. It’s all part of the new mood of informality that the newspapers say the war brought.’ He opened the new can of coffee, and their fingers touched as he handed it to her. She shivered. ‘Douglas, eh? Well, I think I like that better than Superintendent.’ She tipped the coffee into the percolator top, closed the lid and set it on the heat. She didn’t look round, but she felt his eyes upon her. She spoke again hurriedly. ‘Now you’re not going to give me the third degree about what kind of black-market deal did I have to do to get coffee, are you?’

  ‘I heard that the US Embassy has arranged a ration for Americans living here.’

  ‘I’m just kidding,’ she said. ‘Yes, I got it from the Embassy.’ She busied herself in the kitchen. She set up a tray with her best cups and saucers, and the silver spoons and sugar bowl. Then she opened a tin of milk, and put it into the cream jug. ‘Bring that bottle of brandy and glasses,’ she said as she picked up the tray. ‘Winter in this town is going to kill me if I don’t find some way of keeping warm.’

  ‘There I might be able to help.’

  She walked into the lounge with the tray. This room was once a stable for the grand house that backed on to it. Wood blocks had been laid upon the original stonework but even with the white carpets in place, it was not enough insulation against the cold. She put the tray down as near the fireplace as possible. Then she pulled some cushions from the sofa, and dropped them beside it. They both sat close to the fire. Douglas poured some brandy for them. He sipped his but Barbara Barga gulped her measure.

  ‘Don’t get me wrong,’ she explained, ‘but I’m freezing.’ She held a cold hand against his face to prove it. Douglas reached behind him and switched out the table lamp. ‘Now, that’s really cosy,’ she said, but with what degree of sarcasm it was difficult to know. Perhaps she didn’t know herself. Now the room was lit only by the red light of the gas fire, and the only sound was its hiss, and the popping noises made by air in the gas pipes. Douglas put his arm round her. ‘The coffee will boil over,’ said Douglas.

  ‘And I was giving you the last of my coffee ration,’ she said, but the words were lost in the kiss and urgent embrace that followed. For a long time they remained still and silent. ‘Was I so obvious?’ she said finally. Somewhere, deep inside her mind, a little man was still waving a danger flag.

  ‘Say nothing,’ said Douglas.

  ‘A cop’s good advice,’ she said. ‘I throw myself on the mercy of the court.’ As they kissed again, they sank back on to the cushions. The hard red light of the fire made her skin look like molten metal. Her hair was ruffled and her eyes closed. Douglas began undoing the tiny buttons of her bodice. ‘Don’t tear anything,’ she said. ‘I may never get another Paris gown as long as I live.’

  From the kitchen there came the sound of coffee boiling over, but if they heard it they gave no sign.

  Chapter Sixteen

  The low, growling siren of a German armoured car patrol, going down Knightsbridge at high speed, awakened Douglas. He looked at his watch; it was a quarter to four in the morning. Barbara was asleep beside him, their clothes were nowhere in sight. A gas fire filled the bedroom with a red glare. His movements wakened her. ‘You’re not leaving?’ she said drowsily.

  ‘I must.’

  ‘To go home?’

  ‘I’m not going to the office, if that’s what you mean.’

  ‘Don’t be irritable,’ she said running her fingernail down his bare skin. ‘I’m just trying to discover if there is someone else.’ She wanted to hug him and keep him there but she didn’t try it.

  ‘Another woman? Absolutely not!’

  ‘That kind of certainty only comes when a love affair has just ended.’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘Kiss me.’

  Douglas kissed her tenderly. Then he gently broke from her embrace, stood up and went into the next room. He fetched his clothes, and dressed by the light of the fire. She watched him and said, ‘I wish you’d stay a little longer, so that I could fix breakfast for you. Shall I make you some coffee now? It’s probably freezing cold in the streets at this time of night.’

  ‘Stay where you are; go to sleep.’

  ‘Do you need a razor and stuff?’

  ‘A proper razor?’

  ‘Don’t look at me that way. It belongs to the people who live here. It’s in the bathroom cupboard – top shelf.’

  Douglas leaned over and kissed her again. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘Will we see each other again?’

  She had dreaded the thought that he might not ask. ‘Can I meet your little boy? Does he like the zoo? – I’m crazy about the zoo.’

  ‘He likes it,’ said Douglas. ‘Give me a day or two to work things out. It’s a long time since anything like this happened to me.’

  He thought she might laugh but she didn’t; she nodded.

  ‘Douglas,’ she said. ‘Those people you spoke with tonight – Sir Robert Benson and Colonel Mayhew and Staines…’

  ‘Yes…what?’

  ‘Don’t tell them no. Tell them yes, tell them next week, or tell them maybe, but don’t tell them no.’

  ‘Why?’ He moved back a pace into the bedroom so that he could see her. She had turned her head away and was very still. ‘Why?’ The sheet rumpled at her neck like an Elizabethan ruff, and long strands of her hair made lines across her skin, like the graining of rose-coloured marble. ‘Who are they? Are you involved with them?’

  ‘They told me to go along to the Peter Thomas antique shop that day. They told me to ask you if you’d found a roll of film.’

  ‘And you did what they wanted?’

  ‘No. They also wanted me to identify the body as Peter Thomas.’

  ‘That would have been a serious offence,’ said Douglas.

  ‘And I could see that you were going to be a tough proposition, so I backed off. I owed them nothing.’

  ‘What else?’

  ‘Nothing else, except that a friend of mine – reporter who covers the White House for the Daily News – says that Bernard Staines met the President three times last month. One of the meetings was on the Presidential yacht, and it lasted nearly two hours!’

  ‘President Roosevelt?’

  ‘I don’t mean the President of Macy’s department store. These guys are into someth
ing big, Douglas. I’m telling you, don’t go back there and say “no deal”.’

  Douglas grunted.

  ‘They’ll kill you.’

  Douglas found it difficult to believe. But these were mad times, and it was unwise to rule out even the wildest ideas. ‘You don’t mean that?’

  She turned over in bed, so that she could see him. ‘I’m a war reporter, Douglas. I’ve seen a thousand guys like this all over the world. If it came to choosing between your life, and a chance to get US government recognition of the Conolly set-up, do you think they’d hesitate for one moment?’

  ‘Is the Queen in the Tower too?’ Douglas asked this woman who seemed to know everything.

  ‘The Queen and the two Princesses are in New Zealand, living there in their private capacity. They have no political importance.’

  Not as long as the King remains alive, thought Douglas, but he didn’t say this.

  ‘Can I use your phone to get a car?’ he said.

  ‘Help yourself, darling.’ She snuggled into the pillow.

  ‘Barbara…’

  She looked up again. He wanted to say, I love you, but memories of saying it to Sylvia intervened. It would keep for another day. ‘Little Douggie and I – we both like the zoo,’ he said.

  Douglas dialled Whitehall 1212 and asked for the CID duty officer. After he’d given his name there was a multiplicity of clicks and a long wait. Eventually came the voice of Huth. ‘You’re phoning for transport – where are you?’

  Damn! Now he must bring the girl into it, or risk a deliberate lie. ‘I’m at the far end of Belgrave Square,’ said Douglas giving an address just round the corner.

  ‘You fool!’ said Huth without anger. ‘Why do you think we authorize a car service for these big parties?’

  Of course, the drivers would be reporting which guests went home, which flouted curfew and perhaps even the remarks of tongues loosened by alcohol. ‘You’re with the girl, are you?’ said Huth.

  ‘Yes, sir.’ He expected Huth to make some remark about that but he didn’t comment. ‘Stay there. I’m sending someone to collect you and bring you to me.’