by Jim Eldridge
‘He was assaulted, sir. He was found unconscious in the street. He’s been taken to Charing Cross Hospital. He’s still hasn’t regained consciousness.’
‘What do the doctors say about his condition?’
‘I’m afraid I haven’t any more information, sir.’
‘Please send a car to pick me up and take me to Charing Cross.’
‘Yes, sir. I thought you might say that, so I despatched one already. It should be with you within the next twenty minutes.’
‘Thank you, Sergeant.’
‘Any time, sir. And do give my best wishes to Sergeant Danvers, when he wakes up.’
Sarah appeared beside him. ‘What’s happened?’ she asked, worried. ‘Is your dad all right?’
‘That wasn’t about Dad. Sergeant Danvers has been attacked,’ he told her. ‘He’s been taken to Charing Cross Hospital. I’m going to see him. I don’t know when I’ll be back.’
As Stark entered the waiting area outside Ward C, he saw Lettie and Cavendish in deep and worried conversation with a distinguished-looking elderly man. Lettie saw him and immediately rushed towards him. He could see that she’d been crying.
‘Oh Chief Inspector!’ she burst out, and threw herself at him, burying her face in his shoulder. Instinctively, he hugged her, although it felt distinctly uncomfortable. He wasn’t a person giving to hugging people he didn’t know well. In fact, he wasn’t one for hugging at all. He was relieved when Cavendish walked towards him and he was able to gently disentangle himself from Lettie.
‘A terrible business, Chief Inspector,’ said the American sombrely.
‘How is he?’ asked Stark.
‘Still unconscious, I’m afraid,’ replied Cavendish. ‘He took a bad beating. Most of it to the head, from what the medics say.’ He turned and indicated the elderly man who’d now joined them. He was short, but ramrod-straight, shoulders thrown back, a tanned face with white hair and a neat white moustache. A former military man, deduced Stark. And a high-ranking one, I’d guess, from his bearing. A man used to issuing orders. His guess was confirmed when Cavendish introduced him. ‘This is General Squires.’
‘Good evening, Chief Inspector,’ said Squires, shaking Stark’s hand. ‘Dreadful business! I was chairing this evening’s meeting. Felt it my duty to come and make sure the young chap got the right treatment. Lucky we got to the scene before it got any worse.’
‘What actually happened?’ asked Stark.
Squires looked towards Cavendish, who took up the tale. ‘I’d just finished giving my talk, when one of the security people burst in saying there was a terrible assault taking place outside. A man being beaten.’
‘Security people?’ asked Stark.
‘Unfortunately, we’ve had threats, Chief Inspector,’ said Squires. ‘Mainly from Jews and communists. They threatened to disrupt our meeting this evening, which is why we restricted it to members only.’ He scowled. ‘We should have let your brother in, my dear. Then none of this would have happened. The trouble is, if we’d let Bobby in, then other members would have complained that they also had family and friends they would have liked to bring to hear Mr Cavendish’s talk. It would have caused bad feeling.’
‘I’m sure Lettie appreciates that, don’t you, Lettie?’ said Cavendish sympathetically.
‘Of course,’ said Lettie, although the misery of her posture belied her words. ‘What I can’t understand is why Bobby was waiting outside the Mitre Hall. We’d agreed to see him at ten at the Savoy.’
‘Anyway,’ continued Squires, ‘Mr Cavendish hurried out to see what was happening, along with some others, and there was your poor sergeant lying on the ground while these thugs kicked him.’
‘I ran towards them, and they high-tailed it,’ said Cavendish.
‘You could have been hurt yourself!’ said Lettie, horrified.
Cavendish shook his head. ‘I don’t like to see those kind of odds. And anyway, there were others with me.’
‘Did you get a look at any of them?’ asked Stark.
‘Yes, but I didn’t know them. Don’t forget, I’m a stranger here.’ He turned to General Squires. ‘But General Squires here says he knows who they were.’
Stark looked inquisitively at the general.
‘They were a gang of Jewish thugs,’ scowled Squires. ‘One of my people recognized one of them as someone who turns up at our offices to harass us.’
‘Do you know his name?’
Squires shook his head. ‘My man said his name is Izzy, but he doesn’t know his second name. Just that he’s one of a bunch of Jewish thugs who seem determined to make our life a misery.’ He gestured towards the ward doors. ‘So far it’s just taken the form of verbal abuse and things thrown at our office windows, but they’ve overstepped the mark this time. Trying to kill a police sergeant.’ He turned apologetically to Lettie as they heard her stifle a sob. ‘I’m sorry, my dear. I didn’t mean for it to sound so brutal.’
‘Would it be possible to talk to your man? The one who recognized this Izzy character?’ asked Stark.
‘Of course,’ nodded Squires. ‘I’ll make arrangements for him to call on you at Scotland Yard. Will tomorrow afternoon be all right? I’ll need to get hold of him first.’
‘Tomorrow afternoon will be fine, thank you, General,’ said Stark. ‘I would suggest two o’clock. If he’s not able to make that time …’
‘He will,’ said Squires, his face grim. ‘This issue is too important not to be acted upon with immediacy.’
Cavendish put his arm protectively around Lettie’s shoulders. ‘We ought to be getting you home, my dear,’ he said.
She shook her head. ‘I need to stay here. With Bobby.’
‘I’ll stay with him, Miss Danvers,’ Stark assured her. ‘Mr Cavendish is right. You need to get some rest. If there’s any news, I’ll telephone your home immediately.’
‘Good man,’ said Squires approvingly. He turned to Cavendish. ‘Perhaps we could share a taxi. We’re all in the same area.’
‘Certainly, General,’ said Cavendish.
He looked solemnly at Stark. ‘If there’s anything I can do to help you get the people who did this …’ he began, his voice concerned.
‘Thank you, Mr Cavendish,’ acknowledged Stark. ‘I will certainly let you know if there is.’
He watched the three leave, feeling the muscles of his fists tighten as he watched them go. You were part of this, Cavendish, he said to himself silently, filled with a huge rage. I don’t know how, but I know you were involved. And I’ll get you for it if it’s the last thing I do. His immediate concern was to keep Danvers protected, and right now he didn’t know who else might be involved.
The British Union of Patriots seemed to be behind the murders of Lord Fairfax and Carl Adams, the murder of Harry Jukes and the attack on Israel Rothstein, and now – despite what General Squires said – this attack on Sergeant Danvers. So far Danvers was safe because he’d been brought to the hospital. For Stark, that indicated that Squires, for all his involvement with the BUP, was not part of the murderous clique. But Cavendish was. And others would be, too. And they would have no qualms about coming to the hospital and finishing Danvers off, to stop him talking about what had really happened at the Mitre Hall.
Normally, Stark would arrange for a police guard on Danvers while he was in the hospital, but that guard could turn out to be someone murderously sympathetic to the BUP, like PC Danny Fields.
No, he’d have to stay here himself, at least until he could arrange for personnel he could trust to take over.
He stepped into the ward, heading for the nurse’s station, but a ward sister in a stiff white starched uniform held up a hand to stop him, and shepherded him back out to the waiting area.
Stark held out his warrant card to her and said, ‘I’m Detective Chief Inspector Stark from Scotland Yard. My sergeant, Robert Danvers, was brought in here earlier. How is he?’
She frowned. ‘Do you mean the Honourable Robert Danvers?’
/>
The Honourable? The title gave Stark a jolt. But why was he surprised? He kept on receiving additional insights into his sergeant’s background. ‘Yes,’ he said.
The ward sister regarded Stark suspiciously, as if she was having difficulty equating a member of the upper classes with the police force, before replying, ‘He’s still unconscious. At least, he was when I last looked in on him five minutes ago.’
‘What’s his prognosis?’ asked Stark. When he saw her hesitate, he told her in gentle but firm tones, ‘I’m not just a chief inspector, I also had a great deal of experience of hospitals during the war and I know about head injuries. Is he expected to survive?’
‘We … hope so,’ she said.
‘And if he does, will he be able to function normally? Or will there be brain damage?’
‘I’m afraid we won’t be able to determine that until he recovers consciousness. If he recovers consciousness.’
Stark nodded at the words, his fears realized. Please, God, don’t let him die, he prayed silently, at the same time telling himself acidly, So much for not being a believer.
‘I would like to sit with him,’ he said.
Stark saw the sister hesitate. Before she could start talking about permitted visiting hours, he added quickly, ‘This is, after all, a police matter, which we are treating as attempted murder. If he dies, it will be a murder enquiry.’
She nodded. ‘Very well,’ she said. ‘His sister authorized a private room for him, so you won’t be disturbing the other patients.’
She led him back into the ward, then pushed open a door to a small room just inside the ward entrance. The blinds had been pulled and the room was illuminated by one small night light which gave a blueish glow. Danvers lay on his back in the bed, propped up on a bank of pillows. His eyes were closed, his head swathed in thick bandages. Stark noticed an oxygen cylinder by the bed and looked enquiringly at the ward sister.
‘In case it was necessary,’ she explained. ‘His breathing stopped and we thought we might lose him. But then he started breathing again, on his own.’
‘Thank you,’ said Stark.
There was a chair in the corner of the room and he moved it so that it was next to Danvers’ bed, and then settled himself down. It was going to be a long night.
NINETEEN
Stark fixed his eyes on his unconscious sergeant. Two nights, two hospitals. Last night at University College Hospital he had been restricted to the public waiting area. Here, thanks to Danvers’ upper-class family and money, they were in a private room, one where visiting hours didn’t appear to apply. It might have been due to the power of his warrant card as a detective chief inspector, but that hadn’t helped him the previous evening at UCH.
In Danvers’ small private room, the smells of disinfectant and ether gas permeating from the main ward took him back to his own experience of being in a field hospital towards the end of the war. Badly injured, stitched up, bandaged, and surrounded by men dying from wounds even worse than his. Then, the overwhelming smell had been of putrefying flesh. Here, in more civilized surroundings, everything seemed under control, but Stark knew it was all just a surface illusion. People were injured or became ill, and sometimes they died and sometimes they recovered, and there seemed to be very little the doctors and nurses could do to affect the outcome. It was like a game of chance. The throw of a dice.
It’s my fault, Stark told himself as he looked at the still form of Danvers. I should never have let you go there on your own. Agent Noble had warned us about the kind of people we’re dealing with. The brutal, almost sadistic way Fairfax and Adams had been killed showed their ruthlessness.
A beating by Jewish thugs, Squires had said. In just the same way that a Jewish factory owner was supposed to have beaten a trade union official to death in Finsbury Park.
Cavendish was a senior figure in the Ku Klux Klan. The KKK had murdered Noble’s young friend back home in Georgia. For all his smooth surface condolences, Cavendish was rotten. How had that actor, Noël Coward, described him? Like a snake. Yes, that’s what he was. Smooth and charming on the surface, reptilian and viciously dangerous underneath. The whole set-up stank.
He sat, almost motionless, watching Danvers, watching his chest beneath the blankets slowly rise and fall as he breathed. At least he was breathing evenly. He’d been with men on so many occasions during the war, watching them helplessly as their lives were ending, their breathing becoming uneven, ragged, sometimes great desperate gulps for air, other times a painful low humming sound, and he thought of his father, struggling for air.
He should telephone and see how he was. Right now, though, Stark wasn’t going to be leaving Danvers unprotected. The vultures were out there, waiting.
Stay alive, Robert, he urged silently. Don’t die.
Towards one o’ clock he felt a drowsiness sweeping over him, and he fought against it to keep his eyes open.
It’s because all I’m doing is sitting here in this half-light. My brain thinks I’m asleep so my body’s following it. Maybe I should get up and go for a walk, outside, pace the hospital corridors, get some air. Wake me up.
He looked again at the comatose Danvers.
No. He might wake. He’ll open his eyes, and there’ll be no one here for him. I’ve been there. I know what that’s like.
He dug his fingernails into the skin of his wrist, urging the pain to keep him awake. Then he settled back into his vigil.
It was about half an hour later that he heard a spluttering cough, and he realized with a shock that he must have fallen asleep. He turned towards the bed and saw Danvers stirring, his mouth open, breathing hard.
Danvers’ eyes flickered and then opened. ‘Where … where …?’ came the words, the bewilderment. His voice was hoarse and dry.
‘It’s all right, Robert. You’re in hospital.’
‘Sir?’
Stark saw that Danvers was struggling to push himself up, and he got up and gently eased him back down on to the pillows. ‘Stay down,’ he said. ‘We don’t know what the damage is yet.’
‘I was kicked,’ said Danvers.
‘Yes,’ said Stark. ‘Don’t move. That’s an order. I’m going to get a nurse.’
As Stark made for the door, Danvers said weakly, ‘It was the men from the hall.’
‘Yes, I thought it might be,’ said Stark. ‘But don’t talk now. We’ll talk later. Stay where you are.’
Stark stepped out of the small side room just as the sister appeared. She’s been checking on us, Stark realized. ‘He’s awake,’ he said.
‘Thank you,’ she said.
As she made for the side room, Stark saw two figures hurry into the ward from the corridor: Danvers’ parents.
‘Mrs Danvers. Colonel,’ nodded Stark.
‘Mr Stark, where is he? How is he?’ demanded Danvers’ mother.
‘He’s in that side room,’ said Stark. ‘He’s just come round. The ward sister is attending to him.’
Mrs Danvers moved swiftly to the side room and entered, the door closing behind her.
‘Can we step outside?’ asked Colonel Danvers. He gestured towards the darkened ward. ‘Don’t want to disturb the other patients by chattering here.’
Stark indicated the door of the side room. ‘Perhaps we’d better wait for your wife, sir,’ he said. ‘The ward sister may ask her to leave.’
‘I’d like to see her try!’ said the colonel. ‘Have you ever seen a mother tiger protecting her cub?’
‘No, but I’ve seen a cow protecting her calf,’ said Stark.
The colonel nodded. ‘Exactly,’ he said.
The two men went through the double doors of the ward into the waiting area.
‘You look rough,’ commented the colonel. ‘I expect you haven’t had any sleep.’
‘No,’ agreed Stark. Curious, he asked, ‘When did you hear?’
‘Only about half an hour ago. Victoria had got up for something – a premonition, I expect she’d tell you – and sh
e heard Lettie sobbing in her room. She went in and Lettie told her about Robert. Stupid girl. She should have told us as soon as she got in.’ He shook his head. ‘Didn’t want that character Cavendish having to face me, I suppose. Anyway, she told us that you’d volunteered to stay with him, but we decided to come. She said he was badly injured.’
‘He’s been unconscious since it happened. He only recovered consciousness a moment ago.’
‘How did he seem?’
‘It’s a bit too early to say, but he was aware of what had happened. He tried to tell me about it, but I told him to wait. Thought the medicos ought to look at him first.’
‘Good thinking,’ nodded the colonel approvingly. ‘I don’t suppose we know what happened, do we? I got some garbled story from Lettie about some Jewish gangsters.’
‘At the moment it’s speculation,’ cautioned Stark. ‘I’m sure we’ll get the full story when Robert’s well enough to tell us.’
‘Yes,’ said the colonel. ‘Look, Mr Stark, don’t think I’m butting in, but we can take over from here. My man, Bridges, is with our car downstairs. He can run you home and then come back for us.’
‘That’s very kind of you, sir, but—’
‘No buts, Chief Inspector. You’ve done your duty here. More than done it, and we’re very grateful. But we can carry on from here. Family and all that, you know.’
‘The mother tiger?’ suggested Stark.
The colonel gave a small smile. ‘Exactly,’ he said.
‘The thing is, Colonel, I was staying because I’m concerned there might be another attack on Robert.’
‘Another attack?’ queried the colonel, puzzled.
Stark hesitated before enlarging on the statement. At the moment it was just a feeling he had, but it was one he didn’t want to ignore. ‘I may be wrong, but I suspect that there was more to the attack on him than just some thugs. We’re working on a case that has … implications of something bigger. A conspiracy. I may be wrong, but if I’m not—’
‘You’re worried they may come here and try something?’