Corpse (Commander Shaw Book 15)

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Corpse (Commander Shaw Book 15) Page 12

by Philip McCutchan


  Brennan said, “No.”

  Number Four gave a slight jerk of his head and the two supporting guards on either side of Brennan lifted him in the air, swivelling his body so that his head was towards Number Four. Number Four seized it, one hand below the jaw, the other behind the head itself. Each of the guards took a leg and made an angle of some forty-five degrees with Brennan’s crutch. Then all three pulled mightily and stretched Polecat Brennan. He screamed. This was going way beyond anything that had ever happened in Belfast. The neck elongated so that his collar looked several sizes too large for him. Something happened to the wounded hip: I believe the leg came clear of the socket. There was a funny bulge in the bandages and plaster. Brennan went on screaming in agony.

  *

  The medical section attended to Brennan on the floor of the grill room then put him back on a stretcher. He was a broken man in more ways than the obvious one, and he knew that if he didn’t talk the other leg, and then the arms, shot shoulder and all, would go. So he talked, though he didn’t talk much because he didn’t know much. I believed him, so did Number Four. To my sorrow he didn’t know where Miss Mandrake was: the last he’d known of her had been in the cell near the Ark’s slipway. Nor did he know the whereabouts of the CORPSE operational unit; again, his last knowledge was of the Flood Fearer set-up. He did confirm that CORPSE could operate on a pinhead, one man and a boy as it were. And the hard information he did give was useful: it would prevent the inadvertent blowing up of the various bugged ships in British ports; and, hearing what he said, I was thankful that I’d been prevented from mucking about in the radio room aboard the Johann Klompé the night before. The radio rooms, not unexpectedly, controlled the devices that sent the word winging to CORPSE when anyone boarded, and just in case it should occur to authority to inhibit or destroy the radio rooms themselves by outboard means, they were all set to go into automatic blow-up if there was any interference with them as radio units.

  It looked more hopeless than ever: CORPSE had covered everything. On the face of it, we were beaten. When that awareness spread, surrender would seem virtually certain as the only alternative left.

  *

  The fake copper was less useful than Brennan: he told us nothing. Never had I felt so frustrated.

  I left Focal House while Polecat Brennan was being put together again and went out into a London that seemed all at once strange and alien. By now the papers had all carried the news from Plymouth, and London was in a state of shock even though nothing had broken as yet about the Garsdale Head. nor indeed about the various other waiting death ships around the coasts. People gathered on street corners, strangers yacking like old friends. No one seemed interested in work. The pubs were full, buzzing with strain and talk. There had been no Prime Ministerial broadcast after all and I wondered why. Was the cabinet even now facing the cave-in, the hand-over to CORPSE and WUSWIPP, but delaying the announcement for fear of what might happen in the streets? Once the decision was made, there would be a vacuum until CORPSE took over, a time in which it would be every man for himself, a time in which the government, still theoretically in being, would be a thing to disregard … I found a cruising taxi, and went along again to stare morbidly at the Garsdale Head, seeking inspiration, a way of dealing with an impossible affair. I came upon a group of soldiers, men of a bomb disposal squad ordered by the Defence Ministry to remain handy, just in case.

  “In case of what?” I asked the major in command, and he just shrugged: he knew his own uselessness, but authority had to do something however daft. Defence Ministry, he said, had ordered squads to stand by in all ports under threat, and they would all be as useless as his. I looked across at the Houses of Parliament, and Big Ben still ticking the time away to countdown. This afternoon, Parliament would be meeting as usual, it not yet being the summer recess. I wondered how many of the Lords and Commons knew what was right alongside them. Not far behind, the good clergy of Westminster Abbey stood in equal peril, and so did the throngs of sightseers, the tourists from all over the world. I felt my fingernails dig into my palms: it was more than time for the government to act in preservation of life … yet I saw the dilemma only too clearly. You just could not evacuate London, at least not in anything approaching an orderly fashion, and the moment you shut down anything like Westminster Abbey and tried to clear the river area, you simply asked for panic. By now, Plymouth was in everybody’s mind and two and two would be put together instantly. Already, to any thinking person, the static position of the Garsdale Head, on the mud still at low water, was odd to say the least. Authority could bet its last cent that the security would spring a leak soon. What about all the staff of the Port of London Authority, for a start, and the lightermen and so on? They weren’t fools, nor were the crews of the other coasters capable of coming so far up river: they had eyes. The cover story was, to me, as thin as dog’s-wool: it had been announced officially that the Garsdale Head had been loaded below her marks, and had grounded on a mild bank, and the crew had been taken off pending an attempt to shift her. Many would believe it, no doubt …

  I felt a touch on my back and I turned. I came face to face with Cello Charlie, peasant of WUSWIPP. For a moment I thought of nabbing him and grilling him like Polecat Brennan, but the thought didn’t linger. Cello Charlie was of no account at all. Anyway, he seemed glad to see me: been trying, he said, to contact me by phone at my flat. I said I hadn’t been around and asked what he wanted.

  “Dunno reelly.” Charlie wrinkled his nose. “May be nothing in it, not worth bothering like.”

  “Let me be the judge, Charlie.”

  He stared at me. “Look bloody tired, you do. Not much sleep?”

  “Last night,” I said, “none at all.” Nor, for that matter, the night previous. It was hitting me now, so hard all of a sudden once Charlie had mentioned it, that I seemed scarcely to be registering. The Garsdale Head looked peaceful enough; maybe she was. It was all like a bad, bad dream and once more I had that thought (and again rejected it) that the whole bloody show could be a bluff, and CORPSE were relying on Britain packing it in just on the threat alone. Meanwhile Charlie was picking his nose and muttering away to himself. I told him to say what he had to say and he did. The night before — while I’d been wav up north on the bonnie banks of Clyde — he’d met a bloke in a pub, a Dutchman. Charlie hadn’t so much met him, it turned out, as eavesdropped on him. The Dutchman had been talking to another man, a drunk Irishman, and from their conversation Charlie had deduced them to be seamen. They had been joined after a while by another man, a Japanese Charlie thought, or he could have been Chinese.

  “Hard to say, like, with them. He was pissed like the Irish bloke, pissed as a newt he was. But he talked about a Jap ship, something Maru, and Maru means Japanese, don’t it?”

  “Yes,” I said, all ears. “What about it?”

  “Nothing reelly, just that it was somewhere near England, handy placed. Then this morning I read the papers, didn’t I? Cor! Them poor sods down in Plymouth … don’t bear thinking about.” Charlie picked his nose again. “Paper I read said there was nuclear waste on board the boat what crashed in.”

  “I wonder how they deduced that, Charlie?”

  “Well,” he answered reasonably enough, “don’t ask me. Some Navy bloke said what he didn’t ought to, p’raps. And the Japs … they send their nuclear waste to Windscale for reprocessing, right?”

  “Right,” I agreed. Charlie’s phrase ‘handy placed’ was weighing hard. “And you see a link with your Jap friend in the pub, do you?”

  He shrugged. “Just thought it worth mentioning, like.” Then he used the phrase again: handy placed. Think about it, he said.

  I nodded. “I will, and thanks. I suppose you don’t happen to know where I can find this Jap, do you, Charlie?” I asked the question more or less sardonically, but I might have known. Charlie, after all, had seen service with WUSWIPP. He’d followed the Japanese after closing time, and now he gave me the address. Surprisingly, it
was in Westminster: an expensive Edwardian block of flats that I happened to know. Not the sort of address where you’d expect to find Japanese seamen. Another thing intrigued me as well: why hadn’t Charlie reported to WUSWIPP instead of to me? I put it to him. He said he had reported to WUSWIPP and they had been supercilious about it, told him not to go worrying about will-o’-the-wisps or something, though they had noted the address; then he had remembered me, done some more putting together of two and two and linked me in with the horror story from Plymouth. I gave him credit for good thinking. He was short of cash, and a shortage of cash usually produces thought … I slipped him a ten pound note, chargeable to my expense account. He went away then, sliding fast into the crowd, making for his local.

  I stayed on the bridge, pondering. There could well be nothing whatever in Charlie’s story, in fact he could even have invented the whole thing just to make some quick money. On the other hand, he couldn’t have known about the proximity of the Sendai Maru; there had been nothing about that in the papers. His tip might be worth the tenner I’d given him, but there was another angle that had to be taken into account: WUSWIPP may well have sounded supercilious about it, but I was pretty sure they wouldn’t disregard it, and a talkative Japanese seaman living in Westminster would probably receive a visit before long if he hadn’t already. A touch of circumspection was called for, but the premises might be worth a little distant surveillance.

  I walked back towards Westminster, across Parliament Square and along Victoria Street. Passing New Scotland Yard I noted the comings and goings, the brass well and truly on the move. Farther on, I turned off left.

  *

  The block had just the one residents’ entrance, the others being service doors. There was a pub opposite, and I watched over a lager. People came and went, not all that frequently, but frequently enough to keep me on my toes as it were. No Japanese, or Chinese either. Coloured people now and again, looking prosperous: lawyers, doctors, businessmen that sort. No familiar faces, but of course I knew only a handful of WUSWIPP people so that proved nothing. I could be too late anyway. The Japanese himself may only have been staying overnight: he was, I thought — if Charlie had been right in his assumption that the man was a seaman — unlikely to be a resident in his own right. I grew restive: what the hell was I doing here anyway? Wild goose chases loomed to mock at me. I almost heard the tick of my own wrist-watch, urging me to remember passing time. But I was stymied: there were no leads at all to work on, no way, just no way of getting at the CORPSE leadership, of inhibiting them in time, so I was clutching at straws. The reports coming in to Focal House up to the time I’d left had all indicated that everyone else was equally stymied. There had been an appalling paralysis in the air. Everyone’s thoughts were really concentrating on what to do when the blow-ups came, or on the chances offered by giving in before it all happened. The whole situation was so impossible to deflect. Impatience took me by the throat and I got to my feet, the decision made to do something that might be dead risky since I might drop myself slap into a WUSWIPP or CORPSE pounce. I was still dead tired and perhaps my judgment was clouded, I don’t know. Anyway, acting on impulse really, I went out, crossed the road and went into the block of flats.

  I found a man in a small glass-enclosed cubby-hole and said I was looking for a man who’d found my wallet: a Japanese. I couldn’t reproduce the name, I said, but he lived here.

  “Not live, sir,” the man said. “Not live. Just a visitor. That’s to say, there’s only the one Japanese gentleman in the block as I know of.” He told me the name of the relevant tenant, the host; the name rang no bells. Or it could have done: the name was Smith. He gave me the number and I said I would go up. He offered to telephone ahead, and although I guessed he would anyway, I told him not to bother. I went up in the lift, fourth floor, and outside a very solid door I rang the bell, not without fear. No answer. I tried again; still no answer. There was a letter-box, and I bent and pushed in the flap. I looked down a long, narrow hall. The hall was empty of life and I took a chance on it that the whole flat would be equally empty. From my pocket I brought a set of master keys, made specially by our own 6D2 locksmiths and guaranteed to open any lock, Yale type or mortice, in the British Isles and some overseas. At it happened, the very first one I tried, worked.

  I went in, shutting the door behind me. I looked into all the rooms — sitting-cum-dining room, two bedrooms, kitchen, bathroom, W.C. — and found all empty. I didn’t know how long I would be left alone, of course, so I worked fast and searched for clues … clues to anything that might help, that might produce a lead from a vacuum of ideas. I chose the sitting-room first because it contained a kneehole desk. A nice one, well-polished mahogany. One drawer only was locked. I riffled through the others first, pulling them right out to look behind, but found nothing of interest. Then I broke out the lock of the central drawer with a small pocket jemmy. Again nothing: receipts, a cheque book, some share certificates, a thousand-pound holding in National Savings Certificates, 14th issue. The name was still Smith.

  Cursing, I banged the drawer shut.

  There was a bookcase: bookcases can hide things that aren’t books but it would be a long job. Anyway, I started taking out the books one by one. Smith was a man of wide tastes. His books covered almost everything from Alastair MacLean to a biography of Zinoviev, the Russian who had sent the letter that put the lid on Labour in the 1924 General Election. Philosophy and Economics, Drama, Archaeology, enough to constipate any normal brain. And travel books and books on sex … I stopped at a couple of books on Spain. A work on the gypsies of Andalusia, and, somewhat out of context amongst the non-fiction, a novel: Death in the Afternoon, by Ernest Hemingway. When I flipped the pages of the latter and a sheet of notepaper fell out, I believed I’d struck gold and I had. It was a brief note, an aide memoire. Brigadier B, it read, if anything went wrong, could be contacted in Torremolinos. The name of a hotel, and a telephone number, were given.

  I memorised the contents, which was easy enough, and slid the paper back into Hemingway and Hemingway back on the shelf. All was secure, though it was one hell of a pity about that damaged drawer-lock — but that couldn’t be helped now. I was on the way: ‘if anything went wrong’ and Torremolinos’ and ‘Brigadier B’. Brigadier B was Brigadier Bunnett, so much I knew from a list of Flood Fearers, a sort of parish roll of all Britons and other nationalities foreign to Spain living in the vicinity of Carena, supplied by 6D2 Madrid: these people might or might not in fact be Flood Fearers but among them would be those who were, and Brigadier Bunnett was for sure — he would have been the Brigadier who had broadmindedly saved the pastor’s bacon over La Ina. So what with all that, and Cello Charlie’s Japanese, and the mention of a Jap ship name … it just had to tie up. And I kicked myself hard: it was true that Senor de Panata in Madrid’s 6D2 HQ had sent word through that all the Flood Fearers were clean — it was also true that the man in purple had said they were not concerned in Petersen’s activities — but hell! No doubt they would appear lovely and clean, with backgrounds beyond reproach … English gentlemen of leisure and all that … but now it hit me like a bomb: who in fact would be more likely to prove CORPSE’s most manured breeding ground than a set of ultra-conservative expatriates disillusioned with the New Britain, whether it be under Jim or Maggie, Tony or Willy or whoever? They were ready-made for the job. Tailor-made, rather, a good fit. Patriotism was their watchword; to that, CORPSE would have managed to appeal, and the security cover would have been right up their street too: religion. Flood Fearers my backside: they, or anyway a hard core of them led by Brigadier Bunnett, were in it up to the neck. Flood, Noah, Ark and all …

  On the desk, a telephone bell rang out, startlingly. An outside call, or the little man in the cubby-hole, having a busy day announcing visitors for Mr Smith? With WUSWIPP in mind, I opted for the latter, and I went for the window, leaving the phone unanswered, which might appear funny to the custodian but couldn’t be helped. Like many of the older
blocks of Hats in London, a wide ledge ran just below the window and out I scrambled, managing to shut the window behind me. It was vital that I get away with my new knowledge, or anyway my well-founded theories, rather than start a fresh war with WUSWIPP, one I might well lose, since WUSWIPP seldom worked in less than threes. I went along the ledge fast to get out of sight should anyone look through the window, and I got round a corner to safety from prying eyes. Prying WUSWIPP eyes, anyway: I was in fact spotted through an adjacent window by a middle-aged woman standing stark naked by a ruffled bed. She screamed. The window was open and I climbed in, by which time she was sheeted modestly but very frightened and angry.

  I apologised. I said I had no designs upon her, and no, I was not a Peeping Tom. As she backed for the bedroom door I followed, saying she could ring Scotland Yard, or Focal House’s number, or Defence Ministry, and they would all vouch for me. That checked her, and she began to recover. I laid it on very thick, quoted the Official Secrets Act or what was left of it, and said she was never, never to breathe a word to anyone at all about the incident or HM Government would pounce and shove her in Holloway. To make certain, I insisted that she ring Scotland Yard and ask for the Commissioner himself, quoting my name. She was quite overcome. I left her feeling she had struck a blow for Britain, and in a sense she had, bless her. I went down the stairs after a cup of coffee, allowing time for WUSWIPP to vacate the premises, and sneaked past the man in the cubbyhole while he was dealing with other matters.

  That evening, after some welcome sleep aboard an aircraft from Gatwick, I was back in Southern Spain and feeling sad again about Miss Mandrake, with whom I’d last been here outward bound. When I left Malaga airport for Torremolinos, Britain had just twenty hours to go. And, although at the time I didn’t know this, my London flat had been wrecked by a bomb and a lot of shredded CORPSE or WUSWIPP body. Somebody hadn’t been very clever with his explosives.

 

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