The Cilla Rose Affair

by Winona Kent

  He stopped, and rested his arm against one of the great girders, the grit gathering under his fingernails and caking his hands. He leaned his head against his arm.

  What was that?

  He raised his head. A whisper. He’d felt it: barely a breath, warm, stirring.

  No.

  The flame in his lantern danced and bobbed, throwing the shadows askew on the walls.

  Couldn’t be. Couldn’t be.

  Heart pounding, he listened.

  And he heard it: the tracks, the tiny zing of wheels against steel.

  Oh God.

  He looked around him, desperately. Run? Where? How?

  Swallowing, he tried to wedge himself into a hollow created by two of the bolted iron ribs. He willed himself smaller, narrower, his legs shorter, his shoulders compacting like a cat’s. He felt the wind pick up, was afraid to grasp the cables over his head, not knowing what was in them.

  Deep in the tunnel behind him was a sound, a low moan, like the wind in prairie telephone wires. He could feel the train’s hot breath blasting his face, pushing forward, piston-driven. Suddenly, brilliantly, there it was—lights first, rounding the curve, coming, coming—

  Robin shut his eyes and squeezed his hands together between his knees—please—please—please—

  Rocking and rolling, the great silver train hurtled past. He could feel the machinery of its wheels nipping at his knees, dirt and grit and grease spitting at his jeans and his shirt. He could feel the draft sweeping past, pulling him out of the wall—

  Gone.

  He opened his eyes as the last of the travelling glow from the tail lights disappeared around the curve. He waited for a few moments in the utter darkness, the oil lamp still safe between his feet, its flame extinguished. Then he pushed himself out of his shelter, standing up straight. He reached out with his hand and touched the wall, comforting and solid. He found the pathway with his foot, then ballast, then a rail. He drew back, quickly.

  It was all right. Running track.

  There was a green glimmer up ahead—a signal. Go. He couldn’t be that far away from the station.

  Planting his foot firmly against the bottom curve of the tunnel wall, he bent down, and felt around until he located the familiar shape of the signal lamp. He touched its wick, then dug into his pocket and took out the little cardboard box. He struck a match, and the details of the tunnel leaped out at him again, black whalebones.

  He lit the lamp, and picked it up, and began to walk.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Thursday, 05 September 1991

  “Oh no.”

  Sara crossed the road. It was hopeless. The door to her office was barricaded by a bright, bobbing bouquet of balloons: bright mauve and deepest aqua, cobalt blue, tangerine, neon pink.

  “Peace offering,” said the voice, and the balloons parted and Anthony appeared. “From Robin,” he added. “I spent the last two hours blowing them up. I’m quite out of breath.”

  Sara smiled. “You didn’t.”

  “No,” he admitted. “Very good friends in the balloon business, actually. Parties, anniversaries, please-will-you-forgive-my-younger-brother events…”

  He handed her the envelope.

  “It’s actually a birthday card,” he said, apologetically. “I was round there very early this morning, and it’s all we could find in my father’s flat on such short notice.”

  Sara was reading.

  With fondest wishes on this special day. Three x’s and a very shaky I’m sorry—Robin.

  “The sentiment’s in the right place, anyway.”

  He offered her the balloon strings.

  “Is he all right?” she asked, faintly.

  “More or less. Somewhat bruised.”

  “Oh,” Sara said. She looked at her balloons.

  “Would you like to go and see him?”

  “I can’t…can I?”

  “You most certainly can,” he replied, taking back the envelope and writing down the address and telephone number of his father’s apartment in Knightsbridge.

  Sara hesitated.

  “There are women in this world,” Anthony added, tucking the envelope back into the open side pocket of her bag, “who would kill for that. My brother’s expecting you for lunch.”

  “I’ll be there,” she promised.

  More than anything, Robin wanted to be clean. Kneeling on the tiled floor of the bathroom, he had run water in the tub, letting the warm stream splash over his wrists and his forearms. Seizing the soap, he rubbed up a lather and then, he began to scrub, viciously, scouring away the greasy black dirt from the tunnels that had rimmed his fingernails and matted the hair on his arms.

  When his hands were clean, he stood under the shower, hot—as hot as he could bear—until the last specks of soot and filth were gone, and his skin was blazing, and he was new and pink again.

  His hair still damp and smelling of his father’s herbal shampoo from Boots, he went out to meet the doctor, a dry-witted, no-nonsense man on call with the Canadian High Commission.

  The doctor was having a cup of tea and a biscuit in the sitting room. “I’ll just enjoy this for the moment,” he said, “before I inspect the damage.”

  “Excuse me, would you?” Evan selected a tape from his collection and dropped it into the player: Mendelssohn, his Italian Symphony, No. 4. Then he picked up the telephone and made a call.

  “Hello,” he said. “Detective Inspector Crowther, please.”

  He waited, returning Robin’s inquisitive gaze with one of his own.

  “Detective Inspector Crowther,” he said. “Regarding our conversation of several nights past—I believe it would be prudent of you to bring Mrs. Darrow in for questioning at your first available opportunity. She appears to have in her possession an extremely interesting article of reading, and I suspect she may be persuaded to exchange that article—and certain other items of information—for more lenient treatment in the courts. Yes…thank you. I’ll be seeing you later, then. Good-bye.”

  He returned the receiver to its cradle, and turned up the volume of the stereo.

  “Little ears,” he provided, accompanying Robin into the bedroom, followed by the doctor.

  “But you wanted them to hear your conversation with Special Branch about Nora.”

  “I did,” Evan confirmed.

  Robin didn’t say anything. He took off his shirt and allowed the doctor to perform a laying on of hands.

  “You have several bruised ribs. Not broken, I shouldn’t think. X-rays ought to confirm it. Show me the arm.”

  Robin complied.

  “You’ve scrubbed that wound clean, have you?”

  “He had this wrapped around it to staunch the blood.” Evan handed the doctor the oily rag from the tube station.

  “Did he,” the doctor replied, unimpressed. “So much for the post-operative dressing. What interesting artifact did you manage to excavate in order to make the initial incision?”

  “A piece of broken glass,” Robin said.

  “Delightful. Gave yourself a tetanus shot as well, did you?” He released Robin’s arm and without waiting for an answer began methodically to transfer bottles of antiseptic, packages of sterile gauze, forceps and disposable syringes from his black leather case to a tray on the bedside table. “Any other soft tissue injuries I ought to have drawn to my attention or is this the extent of your brief excursion into the field of self-mutilation?”

  “That’s all,” Robin said, good-naturedly.

  The doctor glanced over his shoulder at Evan. “How much of the toxin was released?”

  “It was a bit difficult to tell without a microscope, but from what I could see under a magnifying glass, very little.”

  “You’re an extremely lucky individual,” the doctor replied, addressing Robin again. “The last case of ricin poisoning I had to deal with was a three year old who’d unhappily ingested two castor beans at the home of an unsuspecting great aunt. The child very nearly died. The toxin ca
uses agglutination and haemolysis of red blood cells. It inhibits protein synthesis of the intestinal wall, resulting in loss of both fluids and electrolytes. One might expect to experience nausea, acute gastroenteritis, persistent vomiting, bloody diarrhoea. Untreated this would progress to cyanosis, circulatory collapse, hyperpyrexia, convulsion.”

  He tucked a towel underneath Robin’s arm and poured a measure of chlorhexidine onto a gauze swab.

  “You’re not likely to overlook any of these symptoms, should they happen to present themselves, are you?”

  Afterwards, as the Allegro Vivace raced and capered through the flat for a second time, Evan presented his son with a pad of paper, a pencil, and a freshly made cup of coffee.

  DRAW ME A REASONABLE REPRESENTATION OF ROMILLY SQUARE STATION, he had printed across the top of the page, an addendum to the conversation Robin had begun on the steps outside, very early that morning, when—after being buried in a hug, the likes of which he hadn’t experienced since his early childhood—he had related to his father his discovery of the stencilled wooden crates in the darkened tunnel.

  Robin had a sip of the coffee—laced with chocolate, it was, good man—and set to work.

  Nora Darrow had ensconced herself in her Epsom kitchen, with a pot of English breakfast tea and a bunch of fresh flowers from the garden, and the journal of the late Trevor Jackson, purchased at 20 minutes past five the previous afternoon, Herr Lügner having at long last arrived with a steaming radiator and a profusion of apologies.

  The scattered jottings of an unhappy young man almost 30 years dead were worth every penny of the ₤10,000 she had paid.

  There were, for instance, the various conversations she had undertaken with Jackson—one in the garden of her house during a birthday party, another on Waterloo Bridge, a third at one of those private rave-ups in Soho the Swinging Sixties were so notorious for.

  There was the episode with the East German scientist, Jurgen Wimmer, who had crossed over to West Berlin in the spring of 1966, taking with him most of the data he’d accumulated on the production of a super gun that employed sound for its ammunition, rather than a physical ordnance. Jackson had gained access to the notes and tape recordings made of the scientist’s debriefings. Nora’s controllers at the Soviet Embassy in Kensington Palace Gardens had dearly wanted to know what secrets Wimmer had parted with. Jackson had obliged, Nora had followed through, and Wimmer’s existence had shortly thereafter been terminated: an object lesson in the consequences of defection, the thrust of the message aimed at any other Eastern Bloc scientists who may have been harbouring similar secret thoughts of crossing over.

  And there was the Cilla Rose affair. The Jackson boy had known far more about it than Nora had ever supposed. It had been avionics back in those days, blueprints, specifically, of various aircraft components—most notably those belonging to the Harriers and Phantoms, advanced versions of which were still in development.

  The primary provider of these plans had been a gregarious young lady employed in the promotions department of Seasound Radio who could count, among her numerous close acquaintances, a middle-aged, middle-ranking official at the Ministry of Defence who fancied himself something of a ladies’ man.

  The plans were run out to the Cilla Rose with the supply tender, and offloaded to nearby Soviet submarines whenever conditions were favourable.

  And there was something else in the diary. Nora was completely taken aback by Jackson’s revelations.

  She had assured Victor there was no mention of him in the journal because she had not for a moment ever suspected that Jackson knew anything about his involvement. They had been compatriots, true, Victor with slightly more seniority, a level or two above Jackson. But Victor had not been under Nora’s control. He was deemed a more important source, and his direct contact had been a member of the Soviet diplomatic corps at Kensington Palace Gardens—the same individual, in fact, that Nora had reported to on a regular basis over the years: Oleg Kasparov.

  How Jackson had uncovered Victor’s Soviet dealings was a mystery to her. There were two episodes detailed: a chance rendezvous he had observed on Hampstead Heath between Victor and someone from Kensington Palace Gardens, no name given, but Nora was quite certain it was Kasparov. And a second observation—by far the more damaging. Something Nora would never have given Jackson credit for doing. He had deliberately spied upon his compatriot. And he had followed him to a dead-letter drop, and watched him post his package in an airline bag, under a particular lamp standard beside a particular road in Kilburn. And after Victor had left his all-clear mark—a brick upended on the curb—and gone away, Trevor Jackson had looked inside the airline bag, and had discovered classified documents—photos of classified documents, in any case, or what he had supposed were photos of classified documents, since the half dozen rolls of exposed film he had found nestled inside had not yet been developed.

  Trevor Jackson had retreated quickly, leaving the drop intact, and had observed the pick-up some 15 minutes later from the safety of his parked car.

  The episode merited five brief paragraphs in the journal, but they were paragraphs packed with enough firepower to blow Victor to kingdom come if they were ever made known to MI5.

  Nora sipped her tea, and counted her good fortune to have happened across Herr Lügner when she had.

  Her mid-morning diversion was interrupted by the arrival of her son.

  “Hello, Kevin,” she said, pleasantly, as the young man, having tramped noisily through the rest of the house in his boots, barged headlong into the kitchen. “Have you had breakfast?”

  Kevin declined to answer, yanking the door of the refrigerator open instead, and poking his nose inside. “What’s this muck?” he said.

  “Which muck do you mean, Kevin?” his mother replied. “The muck in the blue plastic bowl, or the muck in the white china one?”

  “This muck,” he answered, holding high a plastic bag full of something soft and green.

  “It’s avocado muck, Kevin,” Nora answered, distantly, returning her attention to the Jackson journal. “Did you do as I asked last night?”

  “Couldn’t. That place you wanted us to take him to was crawling with coppers. Some joyriders went and banged a Mazda into a wall. Not a pretty sight.”

  Nora glanced up. “What did you do with him, then?”

  Kevin grinned. “Left him in that old tube station.”

  “Which old tube station?”

  “That one you showed me that time. Under the travel agency.” Kevin had settled on a jar of dill pickles.

  Nora placed the journal on her kitchen table. “Why,” she said, evenly, “did you put him there, Kevin?”

  Kevin unscrewed the lid of the pickle jar and tipped the rim up to his mouth. “Couldn’t think of nowheres else,” he shrugged, swallowing the brine in noisy gulps.

  “Kevin,” Nora said. “The door to that particular location is kept locked.”

  “Yeah, but we picked the bloody lock, didn’t we, mother?” Kevin wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, burped, and investigated the open fridge once more. “Don’t worry, we made sure it was all closed up again afterwards. All neat and tidy.”

  “If a door is locked, Kevin, I should think that would indicate to you that the owner or owners of the premises wish to keep what’s inside private.”

  “Why?” Kevin stuck his head over the top of the fridge door. “Never stopped me before. Why should it now? You said, dispose of him, so we disposed. A nice, cosy, out of the way little place where he wouldn’t easily be found. I mean, it’s all bricked in, isn’t it? No way out. All walled up.” He was making himself a sandwich out of butter and ketchup. “Just like Edgar Allan Poe.”

  “It’s not all walled up,” Nora said, quietly.

  “It is. You showed me.”

  “I showed you one side. The other side’s open.”

  “That’s not my fault, is it? I was only showing some initiative.” He smeared the ketchup over the two slices of buttered
bread with his finger. “Next time you can do your own bloody dirty work.”

  He banged the fridge door shut and stalked off, leaving the pickle jar and the ketchup bottle both uncapped on the kitchen counter.

  Nora sat in silence. Romilly Square. Of all the places he could have chosen.

  “Kevin,” she said, under her breath. “Kevin…you bloody little fool…”

  “Hello,” Sara said, with a small wave. She had brought one of her balloons—bright blue—and Robin’s knapsack, which was somewhat dirtier from its encounter with the pavement, but otherwise, quite intact.

  “Come in,” Robin said. “I’m boiling eggs.”

  She followed him into the flat, which was small and cluttered: sofa, armchair, television, bookshelves. There was a balcony with tall glass doors, which were open, white net curtains fluttering in the mid-day breeze.

  Robin dropped a new tape into the player: Enya, Shepherd Moons, his father’s.

  He went into the kitchen, and ran the eggs under the cold water tap, and plopped them into two eggcups and carried them out onto the balcony on a tray with a plate of bread and butter and two knives, two forks and two spoons.

  Sara sat down in one of the two comfortable chairs. Robin went back inside, and reappeared with two glasses of orange juice, and Sara’s balloon, which he tied around the railing, so that it bobbed in the sunlight, lending a touch of blue brilliance to the immaculate white mansions of the sunny square.

  “Come on, then, Woodford,” he said, lopping the top off his egg. “Bread and butter soldiers all round.”

  In the sitting room, Caribbean Blue drifted out of the stereo speakers.

  Robin savoured the finger of buttered bread he had immersed in the yolk of his egg. “Ant puts Marmite on his,” he said.

  “Disgusting,” Sara said, making a face.

  “Have I been forgiven, then?”

  “I haven’t decided.”

  “Oh, for God’s sake, Woodford, don’t be coy. I can’t stand coy women.”

  “All right,” she said. “And I can’t stand being lied to.”