by Mark Ellis
“Ah, Merlin, come in.”
Merlin’s heart sank for the second time as he entered the A.C.’s office. It had sunk for the first when the voice on the phone had proved to be that of the A.C.’s prim, blue-stockinged secretary, Miss Stimpson. Now it sank again because the A.C.’s cheeks were flushed bright red. Very occasionally this was a sign only of an excellent lunch. More frequently it reflected the fact of the A.C.’s temper not being at its best.
“Sit down, please.”
Merlin did as he was bid and watched the A.C. pace back and forth in front of windows that had the same view as his own office windows save for being one storey higher. The A.C. scratched his neck and attempted to adjust his collar. His cheeks flushed even brighter. Eventually, he sat down at his desk and stared at Merlin. “Well, Chief Inspector.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Looting. What are we doing about it?”
“Sir?”
“Looting. What’s our plan for handling it?”
“Well, sir. I haven’t really given it much thought.”
The A.C. slapped his right hand on his desktop. “Well, that’s the problem, isn’t it? No one seems to have thought about it!”
Merlin shifted uncomfortably in his chair. The A.C.’s office windows were closed and it was very warm. “May I ask, sir, why you are interrogating me about this matter?”
The A.C. grimaced, momentarily displaying his unwholesome array of speckled brown teeth. “Why am I interrogating you about this matter? Because it is a matter of extreme importance and I would expect you, as my best officer, to have developed some plans in respect of, of, er, this matter!” Insofar as was possible, the A.C. flushed a little more.
Merlin could feel his own temper rising. In addition to the workload that he had carried all year he was also required to involve himself in making plans to counter looting? This was getting ridiculous. When Merlin became angry his skin usually lost colour, in contrast to the A.C. “I have given no specific thought to looting, save to consider it as a possible occurrence when the German bombing campaign commenced and to anticipate it being something requiring rigorous policing if it happened, sir. You may have noticed that I and my team have been rather busy of late. Insofar as specific planning as regards combating looting goes, I was, or rather am, under the impression that coping with this, together with all the other likely consequences of bombing raids, was a matter for the civil defence authorities rather than my humble little unit. Sir.”
The A.C.’s beady little eyes bore into Merlin. He cleared his throat and began to say something then thought better of it. He looked up at the ceiling and when his eyes returned to Merlin the shading on his cheeks had lightened to a rosy pink. “Alright, Frank. Perhaps I was a little unfair. I was just put on the spot today at a meeting at the Home Office. The figures on looting to date were a surprise to everyone and that desiccated calculating machine of a Home Secretary had a go at me in front of a large and powerful audience on this subject, and I suppose I’m taking it out on you in turn. I apologise.”
Merlin realised with amusement that, dreadful as the war was, it was capable of some unexpected beneficial side-effects. For example, he doubted very much that in peacetime the two words “I apologise” would ever have issued forth together from the A.C.’s mouth. As the colour receded from the A.C.’s cheeks, it returned to Merlin’s. “Well, sir. Thank you. But why on earth are you, or rather we in the force, being taken to task on this issue? I would have thought that the civil defence planners would have been thinking about this for ages.”
“Apparently not. A patriotic belief in the goodness of human nature in this country perhaps? A bit of wishful thinking maybe.”
“But you and I know, sir, that the war has already been a godsend to the British criminal classes – and not just to the already established criminals, but to a whole new range of crooks and spivs. Looting was always bound to be a problem.”
“Quite, Frank. In any event, we are now required to do some thinking on how to combat it. But we can’t do it alone. We need to work closely in particular with the AFS and the other civil defence authorities, particularly those responsible for the heavy-rescue men and demolition squads. I think we need to get some sort of coordinating committee going and we have to do it without delay. The bombs are going to be falling around here pretty soon.”
Merlin looked at his watch. It was a quarter past six and he had arranged to meet Sonia at the Lyons Corner House in the Strand at seven. “So what is it you want from me, sir? I’m not really much of a one for sitting on committees, if that’s what you were thinking.”
“No, no, Frank. I can’t afford to have you tied down in this. But I was thinking perhaps someone else in your team? And it wouldn’t be just meetings. There’d be some action, I think.”
“I’ll give some thought to it overnight, sir.”
“Thanks, Frank.”
“If you don’t mind, sir. I have an appointment now and—”
The A.C. waved his hands and offered Merlin another display of teeth. “Yes, yes. Off you go. I hope it’s an appointment involving pleasure, Frank. You deserve it. I shall see you tomorrow.”
* * *
They had left the bedside light in Sonia’s bedroom on this time. The lampshade was bright red and their perspiring bodies had glistened in scarlet hues as they had entangled their bodies in the act of love. The light was still on and Merlin gazed contentedly at the bare shoulder poking out above the sheet. Sonia had fallen asleep almost immediately after, but Merlin’s mind was buzzing. They had met in the winter, but after an old-fashioned courtship and then Merlin’s injury this was only the fourth time they had made love and Sonia was the first woman he had been with since his wife had died almost exactly two years before. The first time had been hurried and unsatisfactory. They had both been very nervous and Merlin had felt as if he’d never done it before. He’d also felt guilty wondering what Alice would have thought. The second and third times had not been much better, but this night, things had clicked. For the first time, Sonia had insisted on the light. “I want to see your face, Frank, your beautiful face.” Any lurking anxiety or guilt had been thrust back to the depths of his subconscious as he’d watched Sonia slip out of her clothes. She had laughed with hands on hips as she jutted out her pert, high breasts. Her skin shimmered in the ruddy glow. This time they had also taken the wise precaution of drinking some alcohol – all they had drunk before was hot tea. They’d shared a very nice bottle of wine and Merlin had taken a whisky nightcap. Enough to help loosen inhibitions without undermining performance. However it came about, it had been beautiful. Alice had always told him he was a gentle and generous lover and he hoped he’d retained the knack. He reached carefully across Sonia and turned out the light. He lay back with his arms behind his head. The image of Hernan Cortes, as depicted on the cover of the Castillo book, drifted into his mind. A great man, of course, someone for a Spaniard to be proud of, and what an amount of treasure he had amassed for Spain; but a very cruel man as well. There was another book he must get hold of – the new Hemingway set in Civil War Spain. He had read that it was due out shortly. For Whom the Bell Rings or something like that. His eyes closed as the first wave of drowsiness hit him and the distant sound of throbbing aircraft engines at last faded away.
Chapter 4
Thursday, September 5
The Count had promised his wife that he would be home by six. She had invited some people for drinks and was anxious for him to be there. She was a good hostess, but a nervous one. The meeting, however, had gone on too long and as he looked grimly down Pall Mall, he realised that he would be lucky to get back by seven o’clock. It was a sweltering evening and for some reason London seemed to be momentarily devoid of taxis. The Count had assumed he’d find one immediately he came out of the Club, but he had been waiting a good twenty minutes. The uniformed doorman, who had been looking apologetically at the Count and the now large crowd of other taxi-seekers gathered on the pavement, a
gain stepped into the road and waved his arms frantically, then lowered them and shrugged. “Sorry, gents. It’s an occupied one. You might all be better advised to walk up to Green Park tube. I don’t know what’s up. It just happens sometimes. Change of shift or whatever.”
The Count had been the first to emerge from the Royal Automobile Club into this taxi-drought and so was at the head of the queue. If he’d been at the end of the queue, he would have had no compunction about following the doorman’s advice, but it would be particularly galling to give up his position, walk off and then see a taxi arriving. He would wait.
Ten minutes later, his patience was rewarded and he climbed up wearily into the cab. “Hampstead, please, driver.”
“Righto, guv.”
Count Adam Tarkowski was a small man in his late fifties. The removal of his homburg hat revealed a short outcrop of silvery hair crowning an appropriately aristocratic-looking head. The face was long and spare and deep, hollowed eyes looked out over a prominent Roman nose. The Count pursed his thin lips as he looked at his watch again. “Hmm. More likely seven-thirty,” he muttered to himself. “Well, she’ll just have to get on with it by herself.”
The Count had back problems and leaned forward carefully to open his large brown briefcase. He withdrew a copy of The Times and browsed through it. It made bleak reading. He looked for stories about Poland, but couldn’t see any. He didn’t need to as he knew well enough what was going on. Since the German invasion a year before, Poland had been partitioned. A brief period of Polish independence had been ended yet again and, as in the previous century, Germany and Russia had carved the country up. Russia had taken most of the eastern part of the country and Germany had taken the centre and the west. Warsaw was no longer the capital of Poland, but the administrative centre for the German province of Galicia.
His country had once more been wiped from the map. Furthermore, the occupying powers had waged a vicious war on its inhabitants. Intellectuals, members of the political and military classes, and many other ordinary Poles had been purged ruthlessly as the twin totalitarian masters of Europe imposed their grip. The Jews were having a bad time of it too, but that was only to be expected.
Count Tarkowski thought of his two younger brothers. Where were they now? One had been in the army and one in the air force. He checked regularly on the lists of Polish officers who were reported to have arrived in England. The flow of escapees had been particularly strong after the fall of France, but had now reduced to a trickle, and neither name had yet shown up. Were they prisoners or were they dead? What of their families? And what of Maria’s family? Her brothers? What of Karol? He sighed and ran his hand over his thinning hair.
His mind turned to the problem at the office, which had caused him endless trouble. What should he do? Replacing the newspaper in his briefcase with a sigh, he took out the papers that had been submitted to the meeting. At the top of the small pile was the text of the rallying cry that the general had given. Sikorski had had a long meeting with Mr Churchill, who had told him, “We shall conquer together or we shall die together.” Poland would rise again like a phoenix from the ashes. Britain would provide General Sikorski and the Polish government in exile with all necessary support. Utmost efforts would be made to supply the Polish forces in Britain with whatever they required. And so on. The Count hoped the general’s optimism would be rewarded, but he couldn’t help thinking that a Britain on the brink of its own precipice was not very well positioned to fulfil its promises.
He stared gloomily out of the taxi window. Baker Street gave way to St John’s Wood and then Swiss Cottage, where the traffic was particularly thick. It was indeed just past seven-thirty when the Count got out of the cab and paid the driver. He turned to face the large, rambling, old Victorian house that they had been lucky enough to find. All of a sudden his mood improved as he appreciated again how fortunate he and his wife had been to escape from the hell of their homeland to this new life in London, despite the many problems they faced.
* * *
As the Count was just about to put his key in the front door, he turned to see a young man in uniform appear from nowhere and hurry up to the cab, which was still standing by the kerb. The Count couldn’t see his face as he jumped into the back seat, but there seemed to be something familiar about him. The cab drove off and the Count opened his door, crossed the threshold and deposited his hat on the stand and his briefcase on the table in the hall. He stood briefly outside the drawing room door and listened to the clink of glasses and the murmur of polite conversation. He took a breath and pushed the door open. The room was full and the Count was aware of familiar faces intermingled with some unfamiliar ones. His wife had said she was going to invite members of the Polish exile community to meet some of their new neighbours. At the far end of the room, his wife’s beautiful face bobbed in to view. She was smiling happily and evidently hadn’t missed him. He walked up to her and kissed her on the cheek. “I am sorry, my darling, but the cabinet meeting just went on forever.”
Maria Tarkowski was ten years younger than her husband and could have passed for a woman twenty years younger. She wore her jet-black hair in a short bob and had a Mediterranean look about her, although she had been born and bred in Krakow of good Polish stock. “Never mind, Adam. You are here now.” She had been chatting merrily to an elderly lady and, switching from Polish to English, she introduced her husband.
“This is my husband, Miss Davidson. Miss Davidson is one of our neighbours, Adam. She is a romantic novelist. A very good one, so I am told.” His wife glided off to another old lady nearby. Miss Davidson, who wore an ornate black dress, which the Count guessed might have done service at cocktail parties fifty years ago, simpered. “Well, I don’t know about that. Are you much of a reader, Count Tarkowski?”
“Yes. Well, I don’t have much time at present, but back in Poland I have, or perhaps I should say I had, a fine old library. I collected old books amongst other things.”
“You don’t say. Well, as I was just saying to your charming wife…”
Out of the corner of one eye, the Count became aware of someone waving a hand at him from the other side of the room. As his eyes focused, his heart missed a beat. Miss Davidson was telling him something about her latest novel, but he wasn’t taking it in. Why on earth had his wife invited that madman Russian? The maid passed with a tray of drinks and he reached out for a vodka. Miss Davidson’s babble seemed to have stopped and she was now looking enquiringly at him.
“I’m sorry, I didn’t quite catch that.”
“I was just wondering if you read Dickens, Count. I find him…”
At this point he felt a large hand fall heavily on his shoulder. “Na zdrowie, my friend. How goes it?” The Count smiled apologetically at Miss Davidson and turned reluctantly to face a burly, bearded bear of a man. “Voronov. Kak dela? How are you?”
The bear responded by grasping the Count around the shoulders and enveloping him in a great hug. The overpowering aroma of vodka and pickled onions made the Count’s nostrils twitch. “Prekvasno, Adam, Spasibo. I am in fine fettle. It has been a long time.”
* * *
Jan Sieczko had been spitting tacks when he got back to base on Monday evening. After waiting around fully kitted up for days in the suffocating late August heat, the squadron had finally gone into action on the very day he’d gone on leave. What made matters worse was that after some frantic activity the day he had been away, the following two had been quiet. He had got into the air, but had not engaged the enemy. He had hoped today would be different, but it was already evening and he’d still not found any action. He looked to his right at the five other Hurricanes. They looked magnificent against the deepening blue of the sky. The sun would set in about an hour, he thought. He was flying as the wingman in Squadron Leader Kellett’s A Flight. They had scrambled in the late afternoon on reports of German bombing formations over Hampshire, but they had found nothing in their sweeping reconnaissance of southern England and
now Jan could hear Kellett’s voice crackling over the radio to suggest that they call it a day. The squadron had begun to swing round on a northerly bearing when Jan saw the bombers. On the northeast horizon a fluffy white bank of cumuli had appeared from nowhere and they were slowly emerging from this cloud cover. By the time the formation was out of the clouds, Kellett’s group had realigned itself yet again to face the approaching enemy.
“Dorniers. About fifty or sixty, I think.”
Kellett’s voice crackled again over the radio. “I can’t make out the size of the fighter screen. Can anyone?”
Jan thought he could see about ten Messerschmitt 109s, but there must be more. “Twenty or so, I think.”
Miro’s voice burst excitedly through the static. “Now we shall have some fun, my friends!” Jan saw Miro waggle his wings to signal his keen anticipation.
“Now, gentlemen. Keep to English please and remember – no grandstanding. Yellow 2! Wait for my order to engage.”
They were about two miles distant and closing rapidly. Jan could make out the rest of the Messerschmitts now. His heart began to pound as Kellett signalled for the aircraft to climb. The descending sun behind his left shoulder glinted and sparkled on the glass of his instrument panel. The sky above stretched away to infinity. They levelled off and now he felt his stomach clench. Jan closed his eyes and said a quick prayer. When he opened them the squadron was almost in position. The Hurricanes were flying a quarter mile or so above the bombers and their protective screen of fighters.
“Good luck, everybody. Just pick your targets and go get ’em!”
Kellett’s Red Section dived down out of the sun and within seconds two 109s were plummeting earthwards.
Jan was in the Yellow Section with Miro and Jerzy. The three Hurricanes followed close behind the Red Section, broke through the fighter cordon and targeted the leaders of the bomber formation. Golden streams of tracer bullets from one bomber’s gun turret flew just past the left of his cockpit and then the right. Jan hunched forward with his finger poised on the gun button. He pressed and a shower of bright lights burst in front of him. He pulled his stick and banked away over the Dornier and he just had time to notice the black smoke pouring from the bomber’s engines before he became aware of the 109 on his tail. He veered to the right, down and then to the left. He felt the tremor of a nearby explosion and his radio crackled to life. “That’s one you owe me, Jan. First drink is on you when we get down.”