Northgate ignored the unspoken criticism. ‘Talking of Dr Birbach, there is the matter of yet another rather important scientist to be considered. You have under your roof a certain Dr Arnold Lindberg, a German national – and this at a time when relations between our countries are, to say the very least, fraught. Coincidence upon coincidence.’
‘And you have him here in this police station, grilling him no doubt. Herr Dr Lindberg is a frail man who has endured Dachau concentration camp for the past three years.’
The big Special Branch man shrugged his heavy shoulders. ‘Needs must, I’m afraid.’
‘Do you know Philip Eaton?’
‘Military Intelligence Six? I know of him.’
‘I think he should be included in this conversation.’
‘Where is he then?’
‘With luck he’s on his way to Cambridge. Let’s resume this conversation when he arrives, shall we, Detective Chief Inspector? Perhaps you would provide a car home for Dr Lindberg and me.’
*
Back at home, he helped Lindberg up to his room. The German looked shattered.
‘Goodnight,’ Wilde said. ‘I’m sorry you have been subjected to this.’
The police had made a cursory search of the house. One of the coppers had drunk the tumbler of whisky he had left on the kitchen table, but fortunately no one had discovered the loaded Walther that Eaton had left for him. It was hidden beneath some old rags in the cupboard beneath the kitchen sink.
It was 2.30 a.m. Outside the streets were unlit; it would be getting light in a couple of hours. Wilde couldn’t sleep and nor could he let this lie. He put on his leather jacket, slipped the gun and torch into the pockets, donned his goggles, and went out into the silence of the road.
Sitting astride the Rudge Special, Wilde tickled her into life and growled off into the last of the night.
CHAPTER 31
He came to a halt outside Old Hall’s perimeter wall, a hundred yards to the south of the estate’s main gate, then hid the bike off the road in a copse. Crossing the road, he clambered over the wall, a construction of brick and flint, no more than four feet high.
The driveway up to the Hall was about six hundred yards long. To the south was the river and the boathouse. To the north-east was the lawn and tennis court. But he was heading to the back of the house, to the outbuildings he had spotted on his last visit.
The sky was dark grey with the faint pre-dawn glimmer of a June day, not far off midsummer. Enough light for him to find his way along the edge of the driveway. He moved steadily, neither fast nor slow, keeping to the grass behind the trees that lined the drive. From the house up ahead, there was a dim glow at three windows where the curtains hadn’t been fully drawn. And then, on the forecourt, three hundred yards away, he saw movement and heard the distant hum of voices, followed by the slamming of car doors and the firing up of an engine. The yellow beam of a car’s headlights lit up the scene.
Wilde watched from the cover of an oak as the car circled the forecourt, and then headed up the drive towards the main gateway. As it passed, he thought he could make out two passengers in the rear seat. One of them small. Was that Eva Haas? He couldn’t be sure, couldn’t make out the face, but it certainly could be her. In which case, why in God’s name would she be here? He wanted to dismiss the idea, but found that he couldn’t. Not quite.
At the gate the car turned left onto the Cambridge road. He waited until the smooth purr of the engine receded, and then was gone.
Wilde moved on towards the northern side of the house, passing within a hundred yards of the forecourt, which was now deserted. The Lagonda, the open-topped Bentley and the Hispano-Suiza were parked in line. Passing them, he worked his way round to the rear of the property towards the outbuildings. A large barn, store-rooms, all the structures necessary to the running of a large estate. And inside them, lights blazed.
In his pocket he gripped the stock of the Walther PP semi-automatic pistol, forefinger feathering the trigger.
To the south, towards a bend in the river, there was woodland. Keeping low, he made his way to the shelter of the trees, before edging closer to the outbuildings. The pre-dawn sky was a shade less dark: the sun would be up within an hour and he had to be away while he still had a semblance of night for cover.
Two figures in silhouette were standing outside the broad doorway to the large and ancient brick-built barn. One of them, the taller, strode into the building. From the way he moved, Wilde was sure it was Hardiman. The one that remained outside was smoking a cigarette, blowing spirals of smoke into the grey.
He had been right to come here, thought Wilde. Something was happening, and his instinct told him it wasn’t farm workers making an early start. He needed to get closer.
The professor began moving again, continuing on through the woods until he was fifty yards to the rear of the barn. After a moment’s hesitation, scanning the open space left and right, he broke from the trees and ran, fast and low, to the back wall of the barn. He threw himself into the darkness of the high building, back to the wall, quickly regaining his breath. He looked up. High above him there was a shuttered opening, but without a ladder he had no hope of reaching it. He dropped to the ground and began to crawl through the grass and dust to the corner of the barn. At first everything seemed to be clear, but then he heard something that threatened to stop his heart: the growl of a dog. The Hardimans’ German Shepherd, Izzy, chained to a ring in the wall.
There was another sound, too, echoing inside the barn. Nothing to do with the dog. A low, gasping moan. Panic? Pain? A human sound, yet terribly inhuman.
As he watched, the dog raised its snout, sniffing the air: a guard dog, trained to warn of uninvited presence. It let loose a frantic volley of barks.
Wilde had no option. Jumping to his feet, he sprinted back towards the woods, bent forward. Behind him, he heard the barking, frenzied now, then men’s voices. ‘Who’s there? Unleash the fucking dog!’ Hardiman, he was certain.
Flashlight beams swept the open ground. The dog was loose and after him. He couldn’t outrun a dog. He pulled the gun from his pocket.
The floor of the wood was full of dead leaves, rotting windfall branches, roots and brambles. Wilde stumbled; almost fell. Turning, the dog was within twenty yards and closing fast. Wilde fired into the air, hoping to frighten the creature away but it wasn’t deterred. It came on in the gloom, teeth bared.
Wilde fired again. This time to kill. The bullet hit the dog full in the head, killing it instantly.
He was fairly deep in the woods, but there was movement and light amid the undergrowth at the edge nearest the outbuildings. He had to go deeper. He heard the crack of a gunshot, then another. Goddamn it, they had guns too! Of course they did.
He ran on through the bracken, the ground slipping away in front of him, down to the river. It was no more than forty feet across. He pulled back his arm like an outfielder on a cricket pitch and flung his gun across to the other side of the river. Then he took a breath and dived into the water head first.
Wilde was a strong swimmer and he thrashed his way across to the far bank, scrambling up, through the mud and weeds. He found the gun almost instantly, then dived into the cover of a tree and lay still, panting.
From the woods on the far side, he saw the disconcerting sweep of torch beams and heard more shots. But they were speculative. Hardiman was still shouting and swearing. Wilde heard another voice and thought he recognised one of the chauffeurs.
‘I think it’s a poacher, Mr Hardiman.’
‘Since when do poachers carry automatic weapons? That’s no fucking poacher.’
Another voice, lower and muffled. ‘Leave them to it, Milt. We got work to do.’ There was something familiar about it. Who the hell was it?
‘OK,’ Hardiman barked. ‘Fred, Gus – find him and bring him to me – hog-tied or dead. And then bury the damned dog.’
Wilde could hear the searchers’ voices from the other side, the brushing of u
ndergrowth. He had to move, and soon. If he was still around when the sun rose, he would be as good as dead. Stealthily, he crawled away from the tree. The woods quickly thinned out on this bank of the river and gave way to a field of young barley shoots. Not high enough to offer any cover to a running man, but if he stayed on hands and knees and moved slowly, it would be difficult for anyone to see him.
The searchers were now not far from his crossing point. ‘We’ll have to go over,’ one man said.
‘To hell with that!’
Wilde continued to crawl until he reached the field. He was moving faster now. Halfway across the field, he decided to risk it. He rose to his feet and began to run.
Two shots rang out. They’d seen him. But at least it was still too dark for them to make him out clearly. He had a head start. Then from behind him, the roar of ignition. Twisting his head, he saw that one of the cars on the forecourt was moving.
Wilde threw himself over the wall and landed on the grass verge with a shoulder-crunching thud. His eyes swept the road. Which way was the bloody copse? The silver birch – that was it.
The Rudge was there, safe and sound. He climbed on, said a split-second prayer that she wouldn’t let him down, then kicked her alive. As always, she started first time, the beautiful beast.
The front wheel rose from the tarmac as he twisted the throttle and accelerated through the gears. The speedo was racing up. Fifty, sixty, seventy. He glanced back. Behind him, the car was turning out of the gateway. He put his head down low over the handlebars. Eighty. Ninety. Thank God the road was dry. He was taking the bends at suicidal speeds, pulling away from the car with ease.
On a straight stretch, he took her up to a hundred. The car was nowhere in sight now. A left, then a right, then a left again. A gap in a hedge. He took it, sliding up onto a farm track, then bumped along the hard tractor-worn furrows. Coming to a halt in the shade of the tall hedgerow, he killed the headlight but not the engine. He waited. A minute. Two minutes. Five. He’d lost them. He breathed a deep sigh of relief.
What the hell had been happening in that barn?
CHAPTER 32
His house was silent and dark, but there was movement and light in Lydia’s house next door. The sun was about to rise; the streets of Cambridge were coming to life. Postmen, milkmen, bakers, all doing their early morning rounds. The clanking of milk bottles on the carts. The smell of new-baked bread in the air. No sign of any of the cars from Old Hall.
He parked the Rudge at the kerb and gave her fuel tank a pat. Then he knocked on Lydia’s front door. Eaton answered it.
‘Lydia? Is she here?’ Wilde demanded. He had to see her.
‘She’s having a well-deserved bath. You look drenched too, Wilde. Come in, we need to talk. She’ll be down in a while. What’s going on?’
‘I’ve been to Milt Hardiman’s place.’
‘Invited – or otherwise?’
Wilde took the Walther PP from his soaking jacket pocket. ‘Definitely not invited.’
Eaton ushered him in. ‘There’s a lot’s going on, Wilde. Lydia got out of Germany by the skin of her teeth. Coffee?’
‘Make it very, very strong.’
‘Have you killed someone?’
‘A dog. He’d have had my throat. Something’s going on at Old Hall.’
‘Did they see you?’
‘Oh yes, but it’s possible they didn’t recognise me. Although they would have seen me riding away. And Hardiman knows I have a motorbike.’
‘Many people have motorbikes.’
Wilde told him everything: his conversation with O’Gara at the races, O’Gara’s murder, the latest news on Birbach’s death and the disappearance of Torsten Hellquist, the arrival of the Special Branch officer. ‘And now Eva Haas has vanished,’ he finished up. ‘And I have discovered evidence that she’s being blackmailed by the people holding her son.’
Eaton frowned. ‘Eva Haas is fast asleep in your house. As is Professor Lindberg. We looked in on them when we arrived half an hour ago.’
‘She wasn’t there an hour ago.’ Had she been at Old Hall? Was she in the car that departed soon after he arrived? Was she connected to events at the barn? What was happening there?
‘Then we’d better find out where she has been.’
‘And Lydia? Why wasn’t she back sooner?’
Eaton had that look Wilde knew so well, weighing up what he needed to reveal and what to keep to himself.
‘Come on, Eaton,’ he said. ‘None of your bloody tricks. Don’t give me any bullshit.’
Eaton laughed. ‘Am I that obvious? Let’s just say we have been interviewing Miss Morris – and that her experience ties in with yours. She was told Eva Haas might not be all she seems. She also learned things that dovetail with what your cousin O’Gara told you. The IRA is in the Abwehr’s pocket. The Germans are smuggling arms to them – and the IRA have something big planned by way of repayment. One might very well speculate that the Cavendish Laboratory could be the target given the presence of O’Gara in Cambridge and his connection to Hardiman. The atom bomb thing . . .’
Wilde had no doubts. ‘If Hitler thinks there are people in the Cavendish who could produce a nuclear device before his people come up with the goods, he would want them eliminated.’
‘You’re right, of course. But he might also want to find out what they know first. The attempt to torture Birbach, for instance? The disappearance of Hellquist?’ Eaton was pouring two cups of black coffee. ‘You wouldn’t want to go to war unless you were pretty sure your enemy was well behind you in the race for the big bomb.’
‘We need to go back there – to Old Hall. Something’s happening.’
Could Hellquist be there? The agonised moan in the night . . .
‘You’re right, Wilde. But not you. I’ll take your friend Detective Chief Inspector Northgate and a couple of local men.’
‘I should come, too. I know the place.’
Eaton raised a decisive hand. ‘No. You stay here. If they didn’t recognise you, then you’ve still got an inside track on the Hardimans. Let’s keep it that way. We’ll search the whole place. No stone unturned. You stay here and find out what Frau Haas has been up to. Also, I want you to draw me a map of the estate and the relative position of all the buildings. Where you were – and exactly what you saw.’
Wilde glared. He didn’t like this arrangement one bit.
Eaton smiled. ‘You need to get dry. And you need to spend a little time with Miss Morris. Now if you’ll excuse me for five minutes, I’m going next door to wake Frau Haas.’
*
They hadn’t seen each other since March and things had not been easy between them even then. There was no straightforward reason for the tension. He had been involved in some difficult late editing of the Robert Cecil biography; she had been working hard trying to find young poets for a planned anthology; he had wanted to go to America to see his mother and to promote his book; she had been desperate to help the refugees. Nothing unreasonable: just the fracture line of busy lives.
‘I think you’d better kiss me, don’t you?’
He saw the tears in her eyes and his doubts washed away. He took her in his arms, smelt her fresh-cleaned hair, touched the bath-warmed skin of her shoulders and back, kissed her lips, heard her sob.
‘I was so scared, Tom. In Germany . . . I wanted you there so much.’
‘Don’t ever go and do anything like that again.’
‘Do you still love me?’
‘Yes . . . but I was afraid I had lost you.’
‘I should have come with you to America. I’m sorry.’ She was racked with sobs. ‘What must your mother have thought?’
‘She understood.’
Lydia nodded, barely able to speak. ‘Oh, Tom, what a mess I’ve made. I hope I haven’t missed my chance.’
‘You’ll meet her.’
‘Can we go to bed? Please.’
He kissed her again. Her eyes and cheeks were wet, her lips salty.
He stood back from her, holding her gently at arm’s length.
‘I want to do that more than anything,’ he said, eyes searching her face as if learning her beloved features all over again. ‘But Eaton will be back any moment. There’s something we have to do. I found something among Frau Haas’s possessions. A letter from Albert – and a demand. The boy is being held hostage.’
Just then, the front door opened. Eaton stood there in the dawn light with Eva, fully dressed, at his side. She looked smaller, more mouse-like than ever. She kept her head down, refusing to meet their gaze.
Eaton waved the letter that Wilde had found in her knapsack. ‘I’ve told Frau Dr Haas what you found. I’ve also told her we believe she was at Old Hall tonight. So far, she has said nothing.’
‘What is happening, Eva?’ Lydia asked, reaching out to take the letter.
‘I have done nothing wrong. I am the victim. My son is missing.’
‘Where were you tonight, Frau Haas?’ Wilde said.
Lydia looked up from the letter. ‘Oh my God, Eva, what have you been doing?’
‘I have nothing more to say until my son is safe.’ Eva’s arms were wrapped around her slender frame. Tight and defensive.
Eaton tapped his watch. ‘I’ve got to go, Wilde.’ He nodded to Lydia. ‘For heaven’s sake talk some sense into her, Miss Morris, otherwise this is going to end very badly for her. Find out what the hell she’s been up to.’ He turned to Eva. ‘We’re on your side – but we won’t be for long if you’re working against us.’
*
Eaton parked outside the University Arms Hotel and raised his hand in greeting to the man waiting at the doorway. Leaning over the passenger seat, Eaton opened the door for Detective Chief Inspector Ted Northgate.
Northgate squeezed in and the men shook hands.
‘A pleasure to meet you, Mr Eaton. I have heard about you, of course.’
‘Not too much, I hope,’ Eaton said.
‘So, you’d better fill me in. Professor Wilde hasn’t been terribly forthcoming.’
‘Of course. You have the search warrant, I take it?’
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