by Robert Ryan
The key turned, the door pushed back slowly and the bearded one stepped through. He held nothing in his hands but a pistol, which he kept down at his side. He looked around the room and, satisfied, nodded.
The second man entered, carrying a tray with a pot of coffee and some sandwiches on it.
‘Can I have it here, please?’ Miss Pillbody asked, indicating the desk.
‘If you move away,’ said the one with the tray. ‘The guv says you’re a bit of a live one.’
She stood and took three paces back to the wall. The tray-man nodded and approached quickly, as if he wanted to get this over with. The speed was just right for her purposes. His ankle caught the steel wire she had unravelled from the crude curtain runner and stretched out across the room.
He staggered forward, the tray tipping in front of him. The beard started to laugh, thinking it was mere clumsiness. Miss Pillbody moved in, caught the tray and the coffee pot. She spun the steel disc of the tray towards the gunman, who took it full in the throat, and brought the coffee pot down on the tray-man’s head, then flung the remaining contents into the beard’s face. Then she was across the room, careful to jump over her own booby trap, and her knee went into his groin. He let out an awful squeal. She was wrestling the gun from his hand when she heard the applause. Miss Pillbody turned to find the postal censor clapping his hands, an admiring grin on his face. ‘Oh, very good, very good indeed.’
She let the bearded man slide down the wall with a groan.
‘I’ve done a little checking, Frau Brandt. It seems you are who you say you are.’ He looked down at his two dazed men and shook his head in disgust. ‘And, you know, I think you’ll do very nicely with us. Very nicely indeed.’
‘For what?’
‘New orders.’
‘From?’
‘Hersch himself. Oh, don’t worry, you can confirm it personally with him.’
‘And they are?’
‘To forget Thetford and Elveden for now. We suspect security there will be doubled or tripled in the wake of your activities. I am not attaching blame to you, you understand. But we need to get someone inside a place where tongues will be much looser about what is going on.’
‘And where is that?’
‘Have you heard of an island called Foulness?’
PART FOUR
1–16 SEPTEMBER 1916
THIRTY-SEVEN
The two men sat in comfortable silence on the sea wall, gazing across the mudflats that led out to the North Sea. Each had his pipe. Both were well wrapped against the early morning wind that was knifing down the estuary. This was an illicit meeting, forbidden by military decree, but when two men meet on a beach, each in need of a few minutes’ contemplation, no man-made law could stop them taking a few moments to enjoy some silent companionship over a pipe or two.
The sun was up, but the strange fog of the last few days had reduced it to a silvery disc, like a giant coin hoisted into the sky. The tide was running out, revealing patches of Zostera, out beyond the samphire. Small groups of brent geese were roaming over the shoreline, picking greedily and honking their pleasure at having the harvest all to themselves. Beyond them the sea was a line of glinting silver, slowly being drawn back behind the masking veil of mist. Gulls came and went from this shroud, as if being made to vanish by a magician who could then make them reappear at will. Something about the light and fog seemed to magnify them; to the men on land they appeared as big as rocs. As the sea retreated, it revealed spindly outcrops, the remains of ancient wrecks, some impossibly old, perhaps Vikings who had foundered during their raids, or Romans seeking passage to Londinium, the captain bewildered by a sudden fog.
‘Early this year,’ said one of the men, the older by a decade and owner of a full white beard. He pointed with the stem of his pipe to make sure his companion understood he was referring to the geese, which had recently arrived from Siberia.
The other nodded and sucked in a mouthful of hot smoke, as content as he had been for many a day. His mind, so often as foggy as this seascape, was pin-sharp. He did not believe in premonition, but something told him there were events afoot, happening off this island, that would soon impinge on him. But he had no control over whatever was brewing. So he didn’t fret about it.
Fifteen minutes passed without another word and the world seemed to shift, as if the moon was not only taking the tide out, but dragging time to a near halt. Perhaps that was why they had chosen this place for the exiles, he thought. It seemed to exist beyond the everyday, as if the mirages playing their tricks with sky and water out there were reality, and England, a few scant miles behind and in front of him, was but a dream. It seemed inconceivable that a war was going on, consuming vast amounts of energy and men. If the belligerents could just sit here for a few hours, they might realize the futility of it all. That in a thousand years, when they were all gone and the machinery of war rusted away, the brent geese would still come for the eelgrass and the waders for the worms and molluscs.
For all its closeness to the heart of a great Empire, he realized, this island ran on wild time, the clock of the wilderness unregulated by man.
Behind him, on the road some hundreds of yards away, he heard the noise of a vehicle, breaking the spell. There was the squeal of brakes and the sound of rough voices swelling and falling on the breeze. The army had finally woken up. There would be a patrol; recriminations at being so close to an islander.
His pipe had breathed its last anyway. He tapped it out, stood, a rather creaky event these days, and nodded to the older man, whose face above that magnificent crescent of beard was browned and lined by many hours spent at such spots, whatever the weather.
‘I’ll be here tomorrow,’ the islander said. ‘Live just there.’ He nodded to a building that appeared little more than a wind-beaten shack close to the causeway. ‘If you fancy another chat . . .’ He held out a hand, every bit as wrinkled as his face. ‘Jack Whent.’
The other grasped it, feeling bone and gristle and a lifetime of work on the land, beneath his fingers. ‘Sherlock Holmes.’
If the name meant anything to Jack Whent he didn’t let on. Just another inclination of the head before the eyes swept back out to the shimmering confluence of sea and sand.
The U-boat had spent the day skulking just below the surface, a few miles out from the area of the Thames Estuary known as the Black Deep. The crew didn’t care for inaction. While you were hunting, you had no time to think of the ridiculousness – and peril – of navigating the most crowded seas in the world in a flimsy metal tube. Inaction gave pause for thought. However, the day was dying and the slow hours had finally passed.
‘Creep speed,’ announced the captain. Schleichfahrt would move them forward by running the electric motors at 100 r.p.m. It was agonizingly slow – less than three knots – but it ensured they didn’t generate much of a sound signature. ‘North-north-west. And take her up to twenty. Very slowly.’
‘Aye.’
They were heading for the Black Deep now. It was one area that saw plenty of commercial traffic and so had only been very lightly mined. He just hoped that the visibility had improved since their previous sortie the day before, when a fog bank had obscured the mainland and islands completely.
Schepke instructed an increase in speed to four knots and consulted the Royal Navy charts on the map desk. He issued a change of heading, running south-west. Ahead of him were two passages, the Sunk and the Trinity, both of which led to the Black Deep. Schepke knew that two fresh wrecks had settled close to Trinity. He headed for Sunk, bringing the boat up as he did so, ever alert for the scrape of hull on sand.
‘All stop, level the boat,’ he said. ‘And bring her up to periscope depth.’
The U-boat rose smoothly through the water as the ballast tanks were pumped out.
‘Eight metres.’
‘And up periscope.’
It was still there, that damned haze, plus it was dusk, which blurred the world even further. Full night was preferable to the tra
nsition period from day to darkness; dusk was when the half-light played tricks with the human eye. He spun through 360 degrees. Nothing: no landmark, no fix. No, wait. A light. A buoy? Possibly. Then another light: a brief flash and gone. He couldn’t be certain. He had to see in person, not through a salt-encrusted lens.
‘Bring her right up. Chief, you’ll have the con. Run the diesels. Biel’ – he indicated the IWO, the first officer of the watch – ‘you come up with me. Bring the signalling lamp.’ Schepke grabbed his thick woollen jacket and put it on, wrapping a scarf around his neck.
They felt the swell now as the currents caught the boat, and spread their legs to secure their footing as U-48 rolled. The new saddle tanks made her wallow more than the original model. The IWO scurried up the ladder and undid the hatch, stepping back as a bucketful of water poured in. Then he clanged up the steps into the English night. Schepke followed, Leitz binoculars at the ready. As he climbed up he felt the cold of the evening stab at him. Breathing was like a sprinkle of tacks in his nose.
There was the lonely ring of a bell echoing over the water, audible even above the chuff of the diesels, running to charge the batteries. The unpredictable mist and the encroaching night meant they could see very little beyond the hull. Schepke put the Leitz to his eyes and peered into the blackness, looking for the signal from shore that he had been told was vital to the war effort: he was to decipher the optical Morse code from the island and radio the information back to base and await further instructions. But there was no light to shine his signalling lamp towards. ‘See anything, Biel?’
‘No, sir.’ Then, looking over his shoulder, ‘What the hell is that?’ Something else was drowning out the diesel rumble.
Schepke turned and saw the looming shape appearing from the bank of fog. It was big and solid and heading straight for them. ‘Dive! Dive!’ he shouted down through the hatchway. But as the thump of the closing ship’s engines, suddenly pushed to full throttle, reached him, he knew in his heart it was too late. The Black Deep was about to claim another wreck and thirty-six bodies.
Colonel Robert Montgomery belted his British Army Warm overcoat tighter around his torso and peered across the reed beds, through the haze that was hanging over the River Roach. Normally he would have seen the smoke stack of the converted pleasure steamer that was heading his way from Burnham-on-Crouch, but the damned fog in the air had blanketed the island for days now. He had grown used to being scoured to his very bones by the North Sea winds, but some freak of autumn weather had banished them. Now the breeze blew from the west, bringing with it the fumes and the filth from the chimneys of the brick works at Great Wakering, busy working day and night for the war effort. Montgomery wasn’t sure which was worse: the icy blasts of gales from Siberia or the grit and sulphur from the mainland.
He heard the plaintive horn of the King of Burnham – once called the King of Bohemia, but rechristened for patriotic reasons – a signal showing the vessel had turned from the Blanklet into the narrow channel through the reed beds that was the River Roach. It would be around a mile away, making its stately progress with the tide.
Montgomery was standing on the quay, the main docking spot on this godforsaken island of Foulness, waiting to greet it and his two new arrivals. He only hoped that, as well as the new detainees, they had plenty of groceries from Luckin Smith and meat from Osborn’s, as well as the case of brandy he had asked for.
Montgomery had not expected, when he volunteered his services, to end up with such a posting. He supposed that at fifty-one and with slightly arthritic hands, he couldn’t expect a front-line commission. But Foulness – never was a place so well named. It was a large pancake of an island, so flat the navy had insisted the windmill be demolished in case it was used for sightings by enemy submarines. They had wanted the church steeple dismantled too, but the islanders had revolted at that. Now the spire was draped in netting and camouflage, which to his eye made it stand out even more.
He would be glad to see the back of this land, with its wind-stunted trees and endless drainage ditches and sea walls constructed over the decades to stop the land returning to where most of it belonged – under the waves. It was his successful time as assistant governor of Aylesbury that had suggested him for the post of warden of the most unusual prison in wartime Britain. There he had gained a reputation as a tough but fair modernizer, as opposed to the actual governor, who had been there since the time of the murderess Florence Maybrick and other celebrity prisoners. Not that the men and women scattered across Foulness were called prisoners. ‘Detainees’ was the preferred term. They had undergone no trial, had had no opportunity to plead their cases. Someone, somewhere had invoked DORA in every case, and they were transported to Foulness to be held until such time as they no longer presented a threat to national security.
Which, he was reliably informed, would be within the next six weeks. Which meant he could leave this featureless fortress for ever and with an unblemished record. No prisoner – detainee – had ever been lost. Well, not strictly true, there had been two deaths out in the Black Grounds, the thick muddy gloop that ran along the southern part of the shoreline. There were ways across it, but you had to know what you were doing. The couple, who had by all accounts fallen in love, despite both being married to others, had tried to make it off the island at low tide. Both had become stuck fast and drowned in the incoming tide. They were discovered, arms wrapped around each other, when the sea retreated. Nobody had tried the same trick since.
He heard his men behind him shift as the prow of the King nosed out of the mist, giving one more sound of its horn. ‘Look lively,’ Montgomery shouted, and several members of his Pioneer Corps shuffled forward to catch the rope.
‘Ahoy, Colonel Montgomery,’ shouted Rippingale, the skipper, from the rail of the craft. The engines were straining now as the reversed propellers churned water to bring her to a halt.
‘Captain!’ Montgomery yelled back. ‘Is all well?’
Even from that distance, he could see the gloom on Rippingale’s face. ‘I wouldn’t be saying that, sir.’
‘Why not?’
‘I’m afraid we lost one of the prisoners.’
THIRTY-EIGHT
‘Watson! There you are,’ exclaimed Holmes, as if his old friend had just returned from an afternoon at his club. ‘The brent geese are back, feeding on the eelgrass. Just the males and the young females, for the moment. The mothers and gosling will follow. We’ve lost most of the swallows, I am afraid. The peregrines are increasing, though, day by day. Did you know sparrowhawks change colour as they age, from yellow to orange to, in old age, deep red? And look, look, at this. The spotted, pied and red-breasted flycatchers. Four warblers – sedge, wood, garden and willow, the water rail—’
‘Holmes,’ Watson said wearily. ‘Might I sit down first before you name every bird on the island?’
It had taken Watson a few weeks to shake the malaise that had come over him following the death of Cardew. That, and his immersion in icy water, had taken its toll. If not for Mrs Gregson’s solicitous care, he might not have made it at all.
‘Of course, of course, my dear chap. Put your case down. I have some brandy somewhere. Are you all right? You look quite done in.’
Watson slumped into the armchair that Holmes had cleared of papers and looked around the room. Holmes had been given one of the signal cottages, built during Napoleonic times as part of a chain that ran around the south coast of England. It was a neat, white, wooden single-storey structure, now bereft of its flagpoles. Holmes had covered the walls of the small living area with charts of his bird-spotting activities. Interspersed were a number of rather good watercolours of some of them, including a fine kingfisher.
Watson then turned his attention to his former colleague and what he saw pained him. His weight had, indeed, ballooned, and the smoking jacket he was wearing was stretched taut. His moon-like face was pale, the eyes underlined by thick brackets. Gone was the rake-thin parcel of nervous energy th
at Solomon had once captured so well. The man was ill, anyone could see that. So why hadn’t he, a doctor, noticed? Because he had neglected to visit. A criminal negligence by a man meant to be his friend.
You had your own problems, Watson: the waking nightmares, the terrible sounds and smells haunting you, remember?
‘I’m sorry, Holmes, what was that?’
Holmes looked puzzled. ‘I didn’t say anything, Watson.’
So the phantom voice had always been just that – a figment of his imagination, mere ventriloquism. It wasn’t the voice of reason but psychological comfort. Ah, but it had served him well. He had the real thing before him now and a duty to restore the great man to what he had been, or as close as he could manage.
‘Do you have a kettle, Holmes?’
‘A kettle?’ Holmes looked at the wall charts, thinking Watson meant a bird. ‘A kettle?’
‘For tea.’
‘Ah, yes. A kettle. Of course.’
‘Can you put it on?’
Holmes slipped through to the tiny kitchen and Watson heard him clanking about with the range, opening and closing the cast-iron doors. ‘It’s gone out,’ he shouted. ‘Won’t be long.’
Watson sighed. It would be some time before he could get enough hot water to feed Holmes the beef tea he had brought. ‘You have taken up painting?’
Holmes’s head appeared in the doorway. ‘No, no. Miss Deane did those. Rather good, aren’t they?’
‘Miss Deane?’
‘Another ornithologist. Met her out in the samphire beds.’
‘Local?’
‘Good lord, no. We aren’t allowed to mix with them, not really. Only about thirty left on the island, anyway, just to keep the farms going. No, like me, she has been cast here into this pit.’ He lowered his voice, pointing to the sheets of paper pinned to the walls. ‘I know it looks strange, Watson, but my birds keep me from the abyss.’