‘Sorry to wake you, Mrs Green, but I need to speak to you and your husband about Miss Voight.’
‘It’s all right. What do you want to know?’
‘You said last night that Miss Voight was a friend of yours?’
‘Had been a friend, Inspector,’ Henry cut in.
Inspector Burke shot Henry a look of exasperation. ‘Had been a friend of yours. When was the last time you saw her, before last night?’
‘Except for once in Oxford Street in August when I saw her coming out of Selfridges, I hadn’t seen or spoken to her since the autumn of 1944.’
‘When you worked together?’
Ena nodded.
‘And where did you both work?’
‘In an engineering factory in the Midlands.’ The Inspector tilted his head and raised his eyes as if to say tell me more. Ena wasn’t going to tell him about the work they did for Bletchley Park and Beaumanor. ‘Silcott Engineering, in Lowarth, Leicestershire. We did work for the RAF and the Navy.’
‘Do you know where Miss Voight lived and worked after the war?’
‘No. As I said, I hadn’t seen her since forty-four.’
‘How did you and this friend that you hadn’t seen for fourteen years come to be on the roof of St. Leonard’s church?’
The most obvious question. The one the inspector was bound to ask and the one Ena most dreaded. The Home Office training was, stick as close to the truth as possible without giving anything away. She took a breath. ‘Well, I didn’t know it at the time, but the day I saw Frieda in Oxford Street she had seen me.’ Ena frowned and made a show of thinking. ‘She didn’t tell me how she knew where I lived - and I didn’t think to ask - but she knew I’d married Henry.’ Ena saw Henry flinch out of the corner of her eye. ‘So I expect she looked up H Green in the telephone directory and found our address.’
‘Did she telephone?’
‘No.’
‘She just turned up on your doorstep on the off chance that you were in?’
‘Yes. I suppose she did. It was eight o’clock at night, Inspector. Most people are home from work by then.’
‘Of course they are.’ The inspector took a pack of cigarettes from his pocket and offered it to Henry and Ena. Henry took one, Ena shook her head. He’s making a meal of lighting the damn cigarettes, Ena thought as the DI struck one match after another that wouldn’t ignite. Eventually Henry fetched the table lighter from the sideboard and their cigarettes were soon lit. He’s trying to catch me off balance, Ena thought. He’s stalling, playing for time.
‘Would you like to know why she came here?’
Henry took a drag of his cigarette and choked.
‘Yes, Mrs Green, I was just about to ask you.’
‘Well, as I would like to get washed and dressed, which I can’t do while you are here, I’ll tell you. Frieda’s brother, Walter, is buried in St. Leonard’s churchyard and Frieda, who had been suffering from severe depression, told me last night that she wanted to be with him. She was here about an hour before she asked if she could use the bathroom. When she didn’t come back after five minutes, I went into the hall and saw that her coat had gone.’
Like lightning Ena’s brain calculated the possible questions the DI would need to ask her from the information she had given him. ‘Frieda had told me where her brother was buried, so I put two and two together. I scribbled Henry a note, put on my coat and headed to Brixton after her. I saw her at her brother’s grave, and then she disappeared into the church. I didn’t see her inside, but I noticed the door to the bell tower was open and I guessed where she’d gone.’
‘And you went up after her?’
‘Of course. She had already said she wanted to be with her brother, so when I realised she had gone up the roof, I was frightened she wanted to be with him literally and would jump…’ Ena looked from Henry to Inspector Burke. ‘And she did, didn’t she? She went up there specifically to kill herself so she could be with Walter.’
‘Thank you, Mrs Green.’
Ena got up from the settee. ‘If you’ve finished questioning me, Inspector, I should like to get dressed.’
‘I have, Mrs Green, for now, but–’
‘Don’t leave town.’
The DI didn’t see the humour in Ena’s interruption, thanked her for helping him with his enquiries and said, ‘I may need to speak to you at a later date.’
At the sitting room door, Ena looked back at Henry. She smiled briefly. When she got into the bedroom she fell onto the bed and sobbed.
Sometime later Ena heard the muffled voices of Henry and the inspector in the hall. After a few hushed words the front door opened and closed, and then there was silence.
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
‘I lied to the inspector. I told him I had left a note telling you that Frieda and I had gone to St. Leonard’s church, but there was no note.’ Henry didn’t comment. ‘So, how did you know where to find us?’
‘It isn’t important. Nothing is except you are safe,’ Henry said, pulling Ena to him. ‘I don’t know what I’d have done if–’
‘Tell me, Henry! How did you know?’ Ena backed away and put up her hand. ‘Oh my God!’ Suddenly everything that had happened since she’d seen Frieda Voight outside Selfridges in the summer began to make sense. ‘It was you! It was your bloody lot at Five who bugged the flat.’ She made fists of both her hands and beat them against Henry’s chest. ‘You bastard! Are they listening now?’ She looked up at the light in the ceiling. ‘Well?’ she shouted, ‘can you hear me? Over and bloody out!’
‘Ena stop! I had to know what you were doing. It was the only way I could keep you safe.’
Ena brought her focus back to her husband. ‘Sid told me he’d got rid of them all. Oh, no,’ she said, ‘are you telling me Sid knew MI5 had planted the bugs?’
‘He might have recognised they were ours.’
Ena dropped onto the armchair. ‘Why?’
‘Why what?’
‘Why did you, Five, have our flat bugged?’
Henry knelt down in front of her and took her hands in his. ‘Don’t, Henry!’ she said, pushing him away.
‘Sorry, I–’
‘Just tell me why you felt it necessary to bug our home.’
‘For your safety.’ Henry rocked back on his heels and stood up. ‘As soon as you told me you’d seen Frieda, I requested a tail.’
‘I know. And he was rubbish at his job. He might as well have been dressed as a clown the number of times I spotted him. And the cars that followed me?’
Henry nodded.
‘You went to a lot of trouble.’
‘You were in a lot of trouble.’
‘Enough trouble for Five to have me run over? The spook driving the green Austin almost killed me.’
‘He wasn’t one of ours.’
‘What?’ Ena felt suddenly sick. ‘Then whose was he?’
Henry didn’t answer her.
‘You don’t know do you?’
‘No. But now Frieda’s gone and the case is closed, no one has any reason to hurt you. The case is closed, isn’t it?’
Ena wasn’t going to argue with Henry. She wasn’t going to lie to him either. ‘Why the listening devices here?’ she asked, changing the subject. ‘I can understand why you bugged the office. You needed to know where we were in the investigation, but our home?’
‘Five’s man who was following you had spotted Frieda in Mercer Street. Sometime later the guy in the surveillance car saw her outside the flat. I was worried that, because she knew where you lived, she might follow you home one night and… And she did.’
‘Go on.’
‘After Sid was killed we stepped up your security. We knew it was Frieda who had killed him. And we knew she’d killed Mac Robinson or had him killed.’
‘Calling herself by my name and using my driving licence.’
‘Don’t you see? You were getting too close to the truth about her. You already knew too much. I asked you time after time to dro
p the case, begged you to stop looking for her, but you wouldn’t. One of the ways I thought I could keep you safe was by knowing what you were doing and who you were talking to, which is why I had your office and our flat bugged.’
‘Did you have to break the window?’
‘It wasn’t me who did it. I was–’
‘In Berlin.’
Henry ran his hands through his hair and exhaled loudly. ‘I was Frieda’s handler.’
‘She told me. I also know about her work in nuclear research. She used my engineering qualifications and ID to help get the job.’
‘She wasn’t a physicist, was she?’
‘You know she wasn’t. She would have used someone else’s qualifications.’
‘Good Lord, did she confess everything to you?’
‘Frieda didn’t tell me, Sid did.’
‘Did you know he was mixed up in this business?’
‘Yes, Sid went to the same boarding school in Germany as Walter Voight. Frieda had something on him from the time he lived in Berlin and later when he covered the 1936 Olympics.’ Ena wasn’t sure how much Henry knew, but she was sure as a diplomat in Berlin Sid’s father - and his mother and sister - would have been known to MI6.
‘Which is how he first met Frieda. We’re not sure how involved Sid was. We know he wasn’t spying at the time Frieda was passing information to the Soviets. Most of it was old news. I think she enjoyed playing the Russians off against the Americans - and at the same time feeding us false information. She played a dangerous game, Ena, one that she knew she couldn’t win.’
‘And in the end, she didn’t care about any of it. All she wanted was to be with her beloved Walter.’
‘Frieda and Walter were not brother and sister.’
‘I know. They were both adopted. She told me when we were on the roof of the church.’ Ena shuddered at the memory. Not because Frieda and Walter loved each other, were in love with each other, but because Frieda had become so tangled up in a web of lies and deceit that she felt there was no way out. ‘Poor Frieda.’
‘The trouble she was in was of her own making,’ Henry said. ‘And, as tragic as it was, death was the only way out for her.’
‘You said you’d help her. Get her to a safe house, and then home to Berlin.’
‘I would have tried, but she had caused so much trouble playing one government off against the other that I knew, and she knew, Five had washed their hands of her. She was out in the cold, which is why she killed herself.’
‘That may be why she wanted to die, but it wasn’t why she killed herself. Frieda fell to her death because she didn’t want me to shoot her. She knew if I did, it would haunt me for the rest of my life. The image of her falling off the roof is bad enough, but, as she said, to take another human being’s life is something that is with you twenty-four hours a day forever. Frieda killed herself so I wouldn’t have to; so I wouldn’t have her death on my conscience.’
Ena reached out to her husband. ‘Hold me, Henry,’ she cried, ‘hold me.’
CHAPTER FORTY-THREE
Ena stood in the doorway lost for words. The office was empty, gutted. There was not a file, a cabinet, or stick of furniture left in it. She took a sharp breath and found her voice. ‘Artie?’
Artie poked his head round the toilet door. ‘Ena?’ He flew across the room, arms outstretched and wrapped them around her. ‘They’ve moved us.’
‘Who has?’
‘The Home Office.’
‘On whose authority?’
‘Dick Bentley’s. Three heavy-set goons marched in here yesterday as if they owned the place and stripped it. Took everything. The only place left to sit down is the lav.’
‘Did they have the correct documentation?’
‘Yes. Removal of classified materials. Authorised and signed by Director Bentley.’
‘My typewriter isn’t classified materials. I’ll ring Dick and ask him what’s going on.’
‘You can’t. They’ve taken the telephones.’
‘The telephones aren’t classified materials either.’
‘Nor is the kettle, cups and saucers, tea and coffee, but they took them all the same.’
Ena walked around the room. A nail was left in the wall, but the calendar that hung on it was gone. ‘What’s Dick Bentley playing at?’ Whatever it was it couldn’t have happened at a worse time. She needed to read the Voight files again. She also needed to speak to Artie about Shaun O’Shaughnessy, find out how Artie knew him and, more importantly, if he had told O’Shaughnessy about the piece of paper that the pathologist found in Sid’s mouth with the name Collins on it.
She circled the room again, ending up where her desk should have been. She glanced at Artie. Maybe it wasn’t the worst time after all. She knew Artie well enough to know he’d be too wound up for the conversation she wanted to have with him about O’Shaughnessy at the moment. He would need to get the missing files and the pending office move off his mind first. And she would let him. Because they weren’t able to make a hot drink, she would suggest they went out to a café for coffee. Then, as there was nothing they could do back at the office, she would offer to buy him lunch and while they ate introduce the subject of, Mr Collins.
She checked the store room and the lavatory. ‘You’re right, Artie. The only thing they didn’t take is the toilet seat.’
Artie followed Ena huffing and puffing. Then, as Ena knew he would, he said, ‘We can’t even make a hot drink.’
‘No,’ she tutted, ‘and I could really do with one.’ She overacted a shiver. ‘It’s cold. So, as we can’t do anything here, let’s go to the Lyons Corner House on the Strand and have a cup of coffee?’
Artie grabbed his coat from the hook on the back of the door, put it on and, as he always did, he wound his college scarf around his neck. ‘I’ll lock up,’ he said, and then threw his arms in the air. ‘They took my bloody keys,’ he screamed.
‘I expect they thought with nothing left to steal it didn’t matter.’ It did to Ena. ‘I have mine,’ she said, taking her set of keys from her handbag. She looked up at Artie and followed his gaze. He was looking across the empty room, his eyes misty with tears.
‘That’s it, isn’t it, Ena?’ he said, when she had locked the street door. ‘That’s the end of the Cold Case Office.’
‘Not if I have anything to do with it, Artie.’ She put her arm in his and they strolled through Covent Garden to the Strand. ‘I’ll go and see Dick Bentley, find out what’s going on.’
Ena gave Artie a pound note and he went to the counter for their coffees. Lyons Corner House was always busy. It was popular with young and old, office workers and shoppers alike. Ena looked around. Lots of woman with shopping bags. Most from shops on Oxford Street and Regent Street. Early Christmas shoppers, stopping off for a reviving cuppa on their way to or from Charing Cross Station, Ena thought.
‘No sugar,’ Artie said, placing a large cup of coffee on the table in front of Ena. ‘Two in mine. You’d think I was sweet enough,’ he giggled, ‘and, an iced bun.’ He handed Ena her change and took a bite from the end of the sticky cake.
Ena sipped her coffee and told Artie a watered down version of why she went to stay with friends in Brighton. He looked horrified that she had almost been run over.
‘I knew you were away, Henry came into the office and told me, but he didn’t say why you had gone.’
‘I was scared. What with Sid being killed, I thought I was next.’
Artie gasped. ‘And then it could have been me. Do you think there was something incriminating in the files we’ve been working on? Oh, my God. I bet that’s why the intelligence service took them today. Thank God they did,’ he said. ‘The bull-neck goons have probably saved our lives by taking those files. If we haven’t got them we can’t find out anything can we?’
‘No,’ Ena said. ‘Anyway, the Voight case is closed.’
‘Why? Did Frieda Voight kill McKenzie Robinson? Did she kill Sid? We can’t be sure either of t
heir deaths were down to her. We think they were. But what we think and what we can prove are two very different things.’ Artie forced the last of his iced bun into his mouth.
‘Frieda killed herself last night.’
‘No!’ Artie almost choked. ‘How?’
Ena felt sick and the nerves on the top of her stomach tightened. ‘She jumped from the roof of the church where her brother is buried.’
‘I thought he died in prison. How did he get to be buried in the grounds of a church?’
‘An agreement military intelligence made with her when she agreed to work for our government. She was handled by MI5 - and since they are convinced Frieda killed Mac Robinson and Sid, they have shut our investigation down.’
Artie swiped his cup from its saucer as if he was angry with it. ‘That’s why they sent the clowns in to remove the files,’ he said, getting to his feet. ‘Fancy another coffee?’
‘Yes, and something to eat. We’ll have elevenses.’
Artie beamed his usual smile when anyone mentioned food. Especially if they were buying his. ‘Here,’ she gave him another pound. ‘Get what you want and I’ll have one of those bread rolls with egg and salad dressing.’
‘I was thinking when I was at the counter,’ Artie said, returning to the table with a tray of assorted sandwiches and two cups of coffee, ‘at least we’re safe now Voight has gone.’
This was the chance Ena had been waiting for. ‘I hope you’re right, but I’m not so sure.’
‘What do you mean? Is there another threat?’
‘I don’t know, Artie. I was hoping you could tell me.’
A curious look crossed his face. He frowned and lifted his shoulders.
‘I need to ask you about a friend of yours?’
Artie couldn’t speak. His mouth was full of food. He made circles with his right hand as if to say, ‘Go on’.
‘Shaun O’Shaughnessy.’
For the second time Artie almost choked. He chewed quickly, swallowed, and said, ‘He is no friend of mine. What has he been saying?’
‘He asked me who Collins was?’
Artie looked to the heavens. A rush of embarrassment emblazoned his cheeks and beads of perspiration appeared on his brow.
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