The Cilla Rose Affair

by Winona Kent

  “Bricks, sir?”

  “Yes. We collect bricks. Old bricks, new bricks, yellow ones, brown ones.”

  “And what do you do with these bricks, sir, once you’ve collected them?”

  “We…build walls.”

  “Do you indeed, sir? Might I see some identification, sir?”

  Evan produced his driver’s license, which the police officer examined at length.

  “Haven’t I seen you on television, sir?”

  “It’s possible, yes.”

  The PC returned his license and Evan put it away.

  “Might I make a suggestion, gentlemen?”

  Evan waited.

  “This isn’t the best of areas at this time of night, especially down these dark little side passages. One never knows who or what one might encounter, itinerant brick collectors notwithstanding. Shall we quietly put the item back where we found it, and then be on our way?”

  Evan handed the brick to his son, who replaced it without comment.

  “Thank you, sir. I’ll just escort you out, now, shall I? Leave a car nearby, did you…?”

  “We collect bricks?” Ian said, incredulously, starting the engine.

  “I didn’t hear you offering up any feasible alternatives.”

  “I don’t have the benefit of decades making a living as an actor.” He buckled up his seatbelt. “We collect bricks. Not, we’re Intelligence Officers quite legitimately investigating an old dead letter drop. Not, sorry about that, sir, here’s my warrant card, if you’d just like to contact Macdonald House they’ll look us up in their computer and have us cleared momentarily.”

  “It worked, didn’t it?” his father countered. “Give me the package.”

  Ian produced the mackintosh-wrapped object he’d hidden under his jacket while his father had been distracting the police officer with his much practised air of innocence, and, one by one, Evan peeled off the waterproof layers.

  “Ah,” he said, with great satisfaction, shining the light of his torch on the two objects that were contained within.

  Ian looked over with interest. “King Tut, indeed,” he said, impressed.

  Chapter Eleven

  Monday, 26 August 1991

  Emma was on her way into London. She stood by the door, enjoying the jerky side-to-side rhythm, the muffled ka-flack, ka-flack of wheels against rail, their echo bouncing off the close black tunnel walls.

  She hung on as the brakes were applied in anticipation of Camden Town, and as the train at last stopped and the doors rumbled apart, she observed the platform through the eyes of a writer of fiction, searching for the commonplace, absorbing the extraordinary.

  Emma knew Camden Town well. It was familiar and old, conjoining four separate branches of the Underground. Its unrenovated platforms still bore their original livery of cream and ceramic blue; its antique clocks told antique time. The modern world encroached only by way of the huge ads pasted trackside, warning against fare dodging, exhorting waiting passengers to place their bets with Mecca Bookmakers, drink Jack Daniels Whisky and hire their temps from Manpower.

  As a young woman in the war Emma had sought shelter in the labyrinth of these tunnels during air raids. She carried a map of the station in her mind: the small surface structure, sitting on its triangular promontory, with a WAY OUT on either side of a solitary pass booth. The bank of escalators leading down to a rectangular, windswept hall, at the end of which was a lit-up board giving next-train destinations for Platforms 2 and 4. Four narrow passageways, two to a side, leading to the trains—on the right, Platform 3, Barnet northbound, and beneath it, the southbound Platform 4. To the left, Platform 1, Edgeware northbound, and, down the steps, Platform 2, for alternate southbound stops.

  Here, on Platform 4, the last of the stragglers had got aboard the train, and there was a momentary delay until the signals in the tunnel ahead switched to green. Emma’s eye was caught by a young woman in tight trousers, cowboy boots and sunglasses, sitting tentatively on a bench beside a Virgin Records poster.

  In the distance, Emma could hear the nonstop rolling thunder of arrivals and departures. She made up her mind quickly, and stepped off the train. Moments later it departed, leaving her to share the platform with Simon Darrow’s daughter, curious as to why a pop singer who lived in Middlesex and who habitually travelled in a chauffeured limousine would be waiting on her own in the tube.

  She didn’t have long to wait. From one of the interconnecting passages a woman appeared, her black hair tied flamboyantly behind her head with a large red ruffle, her middle-aged figure fitting snugly into a pair of designer jeans matched with a white cowl-necked sweater and a red blazer. She sat down beside Tiggy Darrow and engaged in an animated conversation, the gist of which was lost to Emma due to the noise of the trains.

  Their meeting lasted twenty minutes, at the end of which Tiggy departed for the surface and her mother—for Emma was quite certain it was Nora Darrow, based on a picture in an old magazine she’d found after Evan’s Sunday visit—boarded a train bound for Kennington via Charing Cross.

  It had been a good few years since Emma had embarked upon anything approaching an exercise in covert surveillance, and while the skills and the theory had never quite abandoned her, the physical fortitude required to keep up with one’s target was, she discovered, long exhausted.

  Nora changed trains at Warren Street, Emma hurrying along behind her, careful to avoid being picked out of the rush of other passengers. Her destination was the southbound Victoria Line, and Emma narrowly caught the train, rushing breathlessly into the next coach just as the doors were beginning to close. She stood ready to get off at each station—Oxford Circus, Green Park—but it was not until Victoria that Nora disembarked, riding the escalator up to the surface and finding herself momentarily detained at the barriers for not having paid the correct fare.

  Using the unexpected delay to her advantage, Emma dealt with her own wrong ticket by pretending to be a lost Norwegian; by the time Nora had extricated herself, Emma had got her bearings as well as her breath, and was waiting for her as she emerged at the mainline station and made her way across to the automatic dispensers for a ticket to South Croydon.

  There was a train just leaving, with stops at Clapham, Norwood and East Croydon. It was a journey of some thirty minutes through the slate rooftops and brick chimneys of the southern suburbs, ending up in a neighbourhood Emma recalled as being not terribly far removed from the old Croydon Aerodrome, the ghosts of which still lingered in the names of nearby thoroughfares—Imperial Way and Pegasus and Lysander Roads.

  Leaving the station, Nora walked up Croham Road to Selsdon Road, and up Selsdon Road to South End, where she crossed over and continued up Warham Road to Littlejohn Avenue. It was, Emma observed, quite a nice sort of enclave, with hills and trees and detached houses, mock tudor gables and high brick walls. Not quite up to the country estate in Epsom, but middle class enough to keep Nora comfortable on at least a temporary basis.

  At the top of Littlejohn Avenue, Nora unlatched a black wrought iron gate, fished out a key, and let herself into an older home with a clump of tall firs in its back garden and a blue Ford Escort in its drive.

  Emma made a mental note of both the address of the house and the registration number of the car as she walked past, scribbling them down in her notebook as soon as she was safely out of sight, and on her way back to the station.

  The following morning, Emma posted an addendum to her notation: the blue Ford Escort was registered to one Harry Dailey, Travel Agent.

  Out early with her thick, lined legal pad and a disagreeable fountain pen with its propensity for coating one’s fingers with ink, she crossed from Charing Cross to Waterloo over the Hungerford Bridge, stopping, briefly, with the trains rumbling by at her back and the vista of London spread out before her, to make a note on the pad about the topography. She was plotting a foot chase for Jarrod Spencer along the South Bank, past the County Hall and the Jubilee Gardens and the solemn plaques marki
ng the mass loss of lives from the accidental sinking of the Marchionesse; under Hungerford and past the Royal Festival Hall, the Museum of the Moving Image—perhaps through MOMI: that would be an interesting possibility—all the way up to the London Weekend TV Centre where, faced with the sudden termination of Riverside Walk, he was forced to leap straight down into the muddy waters of the sluggish Thames.

  Emma made a note on the page to look up tide times, and then turned around, and was quite startled to discover Evan Harris himself standing directly behind her.

  “Have you been following me?” she asked, suspiciously.

  “Didn’t you notice?”

  She assessed him. “You had a jacket on.”

  He held up a nondescript windbreaker.

  “And a hat.”

  He pulled the Toronto Blue-Jays baseball cap out of the jacket’s pocket.

  “You rotter,” Emma said. “I rang you three times, but you were out. I have news for you regarding Nora Darrow.”

  “And I,” he replied, with characteristic inscrutability, “have news for you regarding the Cilla Rose affair.”

  Chapter Twelve

  Tuesday, 27 August 1991

  “Here we are, my darling.”

  Archivist Evelyn Warren was known throughout Macdonald House for her thoroughness, her lion-like temper towards those she despised (as well as her enthusiastic fondness for those she quite liked), and her spectacles, which on this day were bevel-edged and monogrammed and set in a frame of diamond-studded mauve plastic.

  She placed an boxload of paper still warm from the laser printer onto the counter.

  “I’m afraid I had to go on an expedition through MI5’s database for much of what you asked for, which accounts for the delay. I’ll tick these off as I pass them over to you, shall I? Just to make quite certain I haven’t missed anything. Post Office—deep level tunnels to secure communications. Underground exchange at Kingsway. Whitehall excavations…Buckingham Palace—engineers building the Victoria Line had to divert 350 yards to the east to avoid the Queen’s underground apartments—that’s a nice euphemism for air raid shelter, isn’t it, my love? They keep her personal jewellery collection down there these days, I’m told. HM shelter linked to Citadel tunnel network at the opposite end of The Mall…Fortress London—the Whitehall complex linked to Citadel at St. Paul’s, Bastion at Covent Garden, Rampart at Waterloo, Fortress at Moorgate…”

  She paused to allow Ian time to straighten the stack on the countertop.

  “Now then—Emergency HQ of London’s civil flood control centre. That’s the abandoned section of tram tunnel at Theobold’s Road. The rest of it’s been converted to a traffic bypass between Holborn and Waterloo Bridge. Bit of a liability if you want my opinion, down below the level of the river and sitting bang on top of one of the city’s main interceptory sewers. But there you are. And the telephone exchange between Hatton Garden and Red Lion Square, created from a deep-level air raid shelter—two tunnels, a hundred feet down. Eating, sleeping and working facilities on the Red Lion side, telecommunications plant, generators and repeating stations at Hatton Garden. They’ve also got four extension tunnels running underneath Chancery Lane tube station.”

  Ian was double-checking the printouts against the inventory list. There was one subject left.

  “Yes, my darling, your sound cannon data.” She licked a finger and retrieved the pages from the bottom of the box. “Very hush-hush in its day. The last time anybody had a good look at the file was 1966. I’m quite certain it’s since been declassified, but for official purposes it’s still Eyes Only, so you won’t leave it lying about on a bus or in a public lavatory, will you, my love, or I shall have to Deny All Knowledge and that would be grim, as I’ve used your identity number to access the system.” She took off her spectacles. “All right, then?”

  “Understood, Mrs. Warren,” Ian said, bundling the papers under his arm. “Thank you.”

  “Not at all, my darling.” She took his list. “Come and see me anytime you like, except on Friday afternoons when I’m away at my Country Line Dancing lessons.”

  She replaced her spectacles and returned to her desk. Ian exited Archives to the unmistakable grinding whine of a shredder reducing his scribbled jottings to bits and pieces of square-edged confetti.

  He met his father and Emma twenty minutes later, in St. James’s Park.

  “I don’t suppose you’ve any idea what this vast body of water’s actually called, do you?” Evan said, as they walked together towards the bridge. “I’ve never been able to find out.”

  “It’s called The Lake in St. James’s Park,” Emma replied, sensibly. “It was once a swamp.” She quoted from some long-ago referenced guidebook, now largely forgotten. “‘The park is a favourite place for Government Ministers and officials to enjoy some fresh air away from their Whitehall offices nearby, and Londoners take little notice when seeing, among the many people feeding the birds from the lake bridge, the familiar faces of a statesman or two.’”

  “Or a spy or two,” Evan added, humorously. “Any luck with the travel agency?”

  “Number 84, Romilly Square,” Emma confirmed. “The very same site as Seasound Radio’s business office in the 1960’s.”

  “How big’s the agency?” Ian asked.

  “Not very. Harry Dailey, Proprietor, and two assistants—Maureen Johns, lives in Wimbledon. Sara Woodford, West Hampstead.”

  “Which means we can’t easily infiltrate,” Evan said, thinking.

  “I was able to discover something else about the building, Evan. It was once a tube station. Romilly Square. I thought I recalled it from the war, so I rang up London Underground and they verified it for me. There might be a new avenue of possibility for you in that.”

  “There might, indeed,” Evan replied. They had reached the bridge. “Have you had a chance to look at the package we retrieved from the Covent Garden drop?”

  “Briefly, yes. It’s a bit mouldy, but I believe I can make do. I was quite the dab hand at that sort of thing in my heyday at the Firm.”

  Without comment, Evan reached into his pocket and scattered the remains of a breakfast roll into the water below, where they were immediately set upon by a convention of squabbling ducks.

  “I do hope you know what you’re doing,” Emma added.

  “I think I know Victor and Nora,” Evan replied. “And I believe I know something about human nature.” He turned to Ian, who was deep in thought, his hands clasped over the side of the railing. “What’s the matter, old son?”

  “The girl in the travel agency—Sara Woodford. I’ve come across that name before. Years ago.”

  “In Canada?”

  “In Vancouver,” he said, perplexed. “For some reason…” He stopped. “I know,” he said. “Yes.”

  Below the surface, British Museum was a ghost. For thirty-three years it had been a vital, living entity, and then its stone and iron platforms had been demolished and its white-painted walls allowed to grow dull in the darkness, its usefulness to the travelling public surpassed by a new interchange constructed one hundred yards to the east, at Holborn.

  You could still see the remnants as you travelled down the Central Line. One feature of the old Central London Railway had been a rising gradient of 1 in 60 at the approach to each of its station platforms—to help with braking—and a drop of 1 in 30 for a hundred yards on the way out, to encourage acceleration. The hump in the tracks was still there, as was the sudden widening of the running tunnel, followed by the faint white gleam of the station tiles on the walls. You could still see the steps at the far end of what used to be the platform.

  Anthony had brought his camera with him, and his faithful notebook, its pages filled margin to margin with details of impassioned history, his cramped, left-handed writing so neat it might have been mistaken at first glance for printing. He had amassed volumes on the three dozen abandoned Underground stations of London. He’d made them sit for portraits, he’d undertaken pilgrimages, he’d p
aid his respects.

  British Museum’s unused platforms had sheltered Londoners during the air raids and, after the air raids were over, the Ministry of Defence had moved in, and turned its tunnels into an administrative office for the Brigade of Guards.

  He slipped his headset down—he’d been listening to The Kinks, Waterloo Sunset, one of those songs that evoked a long-ago memory of ragged grey clouds and twilight, of people rushing home to warm yellow sitting rooms, of that peculiar smell of city train stations on wet days: soggy newspapers and damp concrete.

  He was looking for a building, an ordinary structure of light brown, unglazed terracotta, dating from the turn of the century, upon whose flat roof he had heard a contemporary brick office block had been imposed.

  Was that it?

  Anthony went closer. There was a modern bank, flanked with greenery and planters and paving stones. There was a small lane, signposted: BLOOMSBURY COURT. And there was a building on the other side of the lane, nondescript, a block of brick flats on top of a terracotta-walled sandwich shop.

  There was a tiny sign painted on the side of the building, an old-fashioned direction, a hand with a pointing finger:

  TO THE BRITISH MUSEUM

  It was.

  With one foot on the concrete planter belonging to the bank, Anthony primed his camera, framed the shot, and took the picture.

  There.

  Slinging the camera over his shoulder by its strap, he continued his westward jaunt, going underground at last at Tottenham Court Road.

  It was by far the most colourful tube station in London, its Central Line platforms bright with raucous Italian mosaics, abstract patchworks of musical instruments and tape decks, headphones, vacuum tubes, transistors and turntables.

  He was surprised to discover his father waiting for him underneath the train indicator.

  “How did you know I’d be here?” he said, curiously.