Hardcastle's Secret Agent

by Graham Ison

  ‘Scotland Yard,’ said the voice of the operator immediately.

  ‘Special Branch, please.’ Hardcastle waited until he was speaking to the duty officer. ‘This is DDI Hardcastle of V Division. Be so good as to get Detective Superintendent Drew to telephone me at this number urgently.’ He reeled off the number that was printed in the centre of the dial.

  ‘But it’s nearly three o’clock in the morning, sir,’ the duty officer protested.

  ‘I’m perfectly aware of the time, Inspector,’ said Hardcastle. ‘I’ve been on duty since God knows when arresting people, so don’t waste any more of my time.’ He replaced the receiver and turned to Bradley with a smile on his face. ‘My father would love to have been in on that conversation, Jack.’

  Minutes later, Aubrey Drew returned Hardcastle’s call. ‘What is it, Wally?’

  Hardcastle explained, as succinctly as possible, what had occurred since the arrest of Charles Cavanaugh and what had been found in the man’s house.

  ‘Good work, Wally,’ said Drew. ‘I’ll be there later this morning with my team. In the meantime, would you be so good as to take Mrs Cavanaugh and Miss Tobin into custody and lodge them at Kingston police station. And, perhaps, I could rely on you to deal with the stolen property.’

  ‘Yes, sir. I’ll get one of my detective inspectors to return it, when he has a spare moment.’ Hardcastle was not pleased that the donkey work should be passed down to him, but managed to keep the sarcasm out of his voice. ‘What about the murder of the Ropers, sir? I’m sure that once the pistol that was in Charles Cavanaugh’s possession has been tested by ballistics, it will prove to be the one that killed them.’

  ‘I hope you’re right, Wally,’ said Drew. ‘Or are you thinking that his wife was a co-conspirator in the matter of espionage? If it turns out that she was active in supporting her husband, she’ll probably hang anyway.’

  ‘No, sir, I’m just thinking of getting a double murder off my books.’

  ‘Ah, I see. Well, Wally, that would seem to be a matter for DAC Marriott. Perhaps you’d better have a word with him.’

  The dawn was rising in the eastern sky by the time that Hardcastle and Bradley got back to Putney police station.

  ‘Sit down, Jack.’ Hardcastle opened the bottom drawer of his desk and took out a bottle of whisky and two glasses. Pouring three fingers of Scotch into each glass, he pushed one across to his sergeant. ‘Where on earth did you learn to speak fluent German, Jack?’

  ‘My mother is Swiss, sir. She was born Mia Beck in Davos, a German-speaking part of Switzerland. My father, Geoffrey, was a keen skier and he went there in 1907 and met my mother who was a waitress in one of the restaurants.’ Bradley took a sip of his whisky. ‘He brought her back to England and they married the same year. What you might call a whirlwind romance, I suppose. I was born two years later. As a result, I was brought up in a bilingual household.’

  Hardcastle laughed. ‘I should keep that to yourself, Jack, otherwise MI5 or Special Branch or some other arcane organization will poach you.’

  It was six weeks later that Hardcastle received a call from Detective Superintendent Drew of Special Branch asking him to go to the Yard.

  ‘I’m sorry you’re still waiting for your scrambler telephone, Wally,’ said Drew, when Hardcastle arrived at Scotland Yard.

  ‘I suppose I’m fairly low on the list of priorities, sir.’

  ‘It would seem so, Wally. However, I’ll get on to them and gee them up. Now, to get down to business. As you were instrumental in arresting the Cavanaughs and Anna Tobin, I’ve been authorized to tell you the outcome,’ Drew began. ‘It turned out that Anna Tobin was indeed British, and was a member of Sir Oswald Mosley’s British Union of Fascists. We’d had her under surveillance for a while, but then discontinued it. She was not considered to be anything more than a pawn, and her only interest in the BUF would seem to have been to sleep with as many of its members as possible.’ Drew chuckled. ‘Male or female. However, we have proof that she actively supported Cavanaugh in his attempts to acquire material from Moore’s to pass to the Abwehr, although there’s nothing to suggest he found what he was looking for. They were tight-lipped, of course. We were right, though. There was an enemy agent working at Moore’s, but at the Kingston plant.’

  ‘It seems very strange that Eve Cavanaugh should have been sent over here, given her accent.’

  ‘I’m coming to that, Wally. We’ve discovered that Cavanaugh’s real name is Ernst Jäger and he was a major in the Abwehr. His British passport was a very clever forgery presumably manufactured by the German government. Eve Cavanaugh’s passport was a similar forgery and showed her to have been born in Halifax. The Yorkshire one, not the Canadian one,’ he added.

  ‘Unfortunately, we didn’t know she was here,’ continued Drew, making a rare admission of fallibility. ‘God alone knows why she came, but she wouldn’t have had any problems with the Immigration Service, given that she had a pukka British passport. Perhaps she didn’t trust her husband and Anna Tobin to behave themselves, not that it made any difference. Incidentally, Hauptmann Konrad Fischer, whose body your people found in the Thames, was on his way to a meeting with Cavanaugh – or Jäger, I should say. The Government Cryptography Department managed to crack the code written in the letter and the papers in his briefcase, which turned out to be very useful and enabled us to make three more arrests.’

  ‘Cavanaugh certainly gave the appearance of being the real thing,’ said Hardcastle. ‘What I was going to ask, sir, is why did he pretend that Anna Tobin was his wife?’

  ‘Quite simply because his wife spoke with a German accent and, presumably, it was considered wise to keep her away from anybody who was English. It probably came as a blow when Eve turned up on his doorstep. And we’ve no idea how she found out where he was.’

  ‘But surely to God, the Abwehr would have kept a watch on Eve, and yet she slipped away, presumably under the noses of the Gestapo.’

  Aubrey Drew smiled. ‘Despite the reputation the Germans seem to have acquired for super efficiency, Wally, they do sometimes make glaring errors. The Scottish police recently arrested a German agent who had just come ashore from a German submarine. His trousers were soaking wet and he had a small case in which the constable found a large German sausage. Well, you can’t buy one of those in this country for love or money. All of which proves that the super-efficient Nazi regime sometimes makes mistakes.’

  ‘What’s going to happen to that little trio, then, sir?’

  ‘It’s happened,’ said Drew in a matter-of-fact tone. ‘Because Cavanaugh was a German officer, he had the privilege of being executed by firing squad at the Tower of London two weeks ago. His wife and Anna Tobin were each sentenced to ten years penal servitude. Rather lenient, I thought.’

  ‘I reckon that clears up the murders of Frank and Helen Roper, then,’ said Hardcastle. ‘Our ballistics people confirmed that the Luger pistol Cavanaugh fired at PC Dodge was the weapon used to murder the Ropers.’

  ‘Cavanaugh admitted murdering the Ropers, Wally,’ said Drew. ‘It seemed to the interrogating officer that it was almost a matter of Prussian pride that he’d done so.’

  A detective constable knocked and entered. ‘Excuse me, sir. Mr Hardcastle’s clerk telephoned just now. He had taken a message from Mr Marriott’s clerk to the effect that if Mr Hardcastle is still here, he’s to see Mr Marriott as soon as possible.’

  ‘Could be your move to A Division, Wally,’ said Drew, winking.

  ‘Or Special Branch, sir,’ retorted Hardcastle.

  Hardcastle stood up and left Drew’s office to find out exactly what Marriott had in store for him.

  GLOSSARY

  AFS: auxiliary fire service.

  AIR MINISTRY: department of government responsible for the Royal Air Force, later incorporated into the Ministry of Defence as MOD (Air).

  ARP: air-raid precautions. Part of the Civil Defence organization. Among other tasks, air-raid wardens checked that
the blackout regulations were observed, and assisted at bomb scenes.

  AWOL: absent without leave.

  BAG CARRIER: an officer, usually a sergeant, deputed to assist the senior investigating officer in a murder or other serious enquiry.

  BAILIWICK: area of responsibility.

  BEF: British Expeditionary Force in France and Flanders.

  BELL, on the: using the bell on a police car as a warning to afford it precedence.

  BLITZ: name given to the intensive raids on London by the Luftwaffe. (A shortening of the German word blitzkrieg: lightning war.)

  BOMBARDIER: one rank below sergeant in the Royal Artillery, equal to a corporal in other regiments (except the Household Cavalry).

  CHARLADY: a cleaning woman.

  CHOKEY: a prison (ex Hindi).

  CID: Criminal Investigation Department.

  CMP: Corps of Military Police.

  COLLAR, to feel a: to make an arrest.

  DABS: fingerprints.

  DAC: deputy assistant commissioner.

  DANCERS, to take it on one’s: to run or to escape.

  DC: detective constable.

  DCI: detective chief inspector.

  DDI: divisional detective inspector.

  D NOTICE: a government notice issued to news editors requiring them not to publish certain information for reasons of national security.

  DUFF, up the: pregnant.

  FEEL A COLLAR, to: to make an arrest.

  FIREWATCHING: employees of large premises were required, by roster, to spend the night on duty to tackle incendiary bombs before they took hold.

  GAMAGES: a London department store (now closed).

  GBH: grievous bodily harm.

  GREAT SCOTLAND YARD: location of an army recruiting office and a military police detachment. Not to be confused with New Scotland Yard, half a mile away in Whitehall.

  GUNNERS, The: an informal term for the Royal Artillery. In the singular, the lowest rank of a member of that regiment (equivalent to a private soldier in some other regiments).

  GUV or GUV’NOR: informal alternative to ‘sir’.

  HAMMER-LOCK-AND-BAR: a hold used by police when arresting a fractious prisoner.

  HANDLEY Tommy: a popular wartime comedian responsible for ITMA (qv).

  HAWKING HER MUTTON: leading a life of prostitution.

  ITMA: an acronym for It’s That Man Again, a popular radio show starring Tommy Handley, aired between 1939 and 1949 when Handley died.

  KATE, IN THE: Cockney rhyming slang. Kate Carney – in the army.

  KNOCKING SHOP: a brothel.

  NICKED: arrested or stolen.

  OCCURRENCE BOOK: handwritten record of every incident occurring in a police sub-division.

  OLD BAILEY: Central Criminal Court in a street called Old Bailey.

  PC: police constable.

  PICCADILLY WINDOW: a monocle.

  PICKFORDS: a large furniture removals company.

  POLICE GAZETTE: official nationwide publication listing wanted person, etc. Now superseded by the Police National Computer (PNC).

  PREVIOUS: prior convictions.

  RAF: Royal Air Force.

  REDCAPS: the Corps of Military Police.

  RP: regimental police, not to be confused with the Corps of Military Police.

  RSM: regimental sergeant major (a senior army warrant officer).

  SHILLING: a pre-decimal coin equivalent to 5p.

  SKIP or SKIPPER: an informal police alternative to detective-sergeant, station-sergeant, clerk-sergeant and sergeant.

  SMOKE, The: London.

  SQUADDY: a rank-and-file soldier. Plural: SQUADDIES.

  SRN: state-registered nurse.

  SYLVESTER, Victor: famous British bandleader of the 1940s who led a ‘strict tempo’ dance band and had his own radio programme.

  TAPE(S): the chevron(s) indicating a non-commissioned officer’s rank.

  TERRITORIAL ARMY or TA: a volunteer force locally organized to provide a reserve of trained manpower that can be mobilised in the event of an emergency.

  TUMBLE, a: sexual intercourse.

  UXB: unexploded bomb.

  WAR OFFICE: Department of State overseeing the army. (Now a part of the Ministry of Defence as MOD Army.)

  WDC: woman detective constable.

  WEHRMACHT: German army.

  WIPERS: Army slang for Ypres in Belgium, scene of several fierce Great War battles.

  WPC: woman police constable.