by Robert Ryan
‘Three or four weeks ago.’
‘Difficult to change?’
‘Six bolts, four screws.’
‘I would check them carefully. I suspect the plates may have been switched. My guess is that Garavan intends to forge pound notes. Or rather reproduce them using the genuine plates while the bank makes forgeries. Good forgeries, mind, so it would be a while before you noticed. In the meantime, he will be making perfect notes and exchanging them, for say, Swiss francs or US dollars.’
‘I’ll be damned,’ said Sir Gerald.
‘Perhaps,’ suggested Holmes, ‘the plates should be removed and locked in the vault each evening, as I believe happens at Portals Printing.’
‘Surely you can just change the design?’ asked Sir Francis.
‘It isn’t as simple as that,’ said Sir Gerald, glumly. ‘You have to declare the current design null and void. There are over forty million pounds in paper currency in circulation at the moment. Confidence in the Treasury and the Bank . . .’ He fell quiet for a moment, thinking of the economy and the damage that could be done to it during wartime. ‘But of course, it isn’t just the printing plates that matter. You need the correct machines. One to print the notes, one for the serial numbers, one for the signature. Another to cut and trim from a panel of twenty to single notes. And there’s the paper.’
‘Paper?’ asked Watson.
Sir Gerald rubbed his thumb and forefinger together. ‘It’s a unique cotton-linen blend, made by Spicer Brothers and watermarked. It’s the wavy line watermark that makes forgeries so difficult. People have used grease or picture varnish, but it’s nigh impossible to copy. Only the Amsterdam forgeries have come close. Even with the plates, there is a long way to go. And they didn’t take any of the paper, as far as I can tell. The rolls are too big and heavy to simply carry off. We use trolleys to move them around.’
‘How is it delivered?’ asked Holmes, suddenly alert. ‘The paper?’
‘Delivered? Here?’
‘By the underground railway?’ Holmes asked.
Sir Gerald thought for a moment. ‘No. The same way we got the presses here. By barge. Direct from the manufacturer.’
Holmes and Watson exchanged glances. ‘You stay here,’ said Watson to the detective. ‘Bullimore, come with me. Sir Francis, may I borrow a soldier or two?’
‘By all means. But where are you going?’
‘To get the Treasury’s paper back.’
The fighters were waiting for them as they crossed back over the English coast. Someone, somewhere was learning something, thought Schrader. Instead of trying to gain height when the bombers first appeared, the British had realized they could take their time in climbing, and they would be at an attacking altitude once the bombers returned. True, they had to let London be hit, but the idea was that at least some of the bombers would not be returning the next night. It was taking the long view.
The first Schrader knew about the ambush was the tracers that arced through the sky, as lazy as drugged fireflies until, at the last moment they seem to accelerate to the speed of shooting stars.
A green flare burst among them, the signal to close up into a diamond formation. But even before Deitling could shift the giant plane towards the silhouettes flying around him, the Parabellum MG14 in the nose opened up as forward gunner Rohrbach let loose at something.
A beam swept towards them, passing a few metres off the port wing.
‘Stay out of the lights!’ Schrader yelled at Deitling.
‘You don’t have to tell me,’ Deitling replied. ‘Sir.’
Rutter had lowered the ventral ramp and had slid down into the lower gun position. Now he let off a burst into the night sky. He poked his head back up into the cabin.
‘Sopwith Camels, I think,’ he said breathlessly. ‘Swarms of them.’
‘Damn it.’ These planes were small, fast, manoeuvrable and normally found only on the Western Front.
Now the Giant’s guns front and ventral fired in unison and the airframe trembled from the recoils.
A small sun burst into life to their left, growing in intensity, trailing sparks. It was a Gotha. Tracer bullets continued to stream into it, just to be sure of the kill. The streak of flaming bomber tipped onto one wing, seemed to slow, and then began a sickening spin earthwards. A section of the upper wing detached and made its own spiral, like a crazed sycamore seed. The sudden red bloom as a fuel tank went told him that at least the crew’s suffering was over.
‘OK, let’s get—’ Schrader began.
The Giant rocked, like a boat struck by a rogue wave. Shrapnel splinters rattled against its underside. He felt it crabbing through the air. A coastal battery or an ack-ack ship had their range and height now. All they needed.
‘Man all guns!’ he shouted.
Rutter slid back down into position. His gun began its staccato bursts almost immediately. Borschberg opened the upper hatch and cold air punched into the cabin with a roar, causing Schrader to grab at his charts as they swirled off his table. The gunner/engineer climbed out onto the upper wing, and kicked the hatch shut behind him. Soon, they could hear and see the muzzle flashes from his MG14.
The moon, which had been their friend over London, was showing another, more treacherous face now. The silvery beams were picking out the bombers for the fighters and Schrader could see the frantic winking of the Gotha and Giants’ machine guns as they tried to catch one of the dark shapes that were flitting among them like crazed bats. It had only been a matter of time before the British came up with a response. A leapfrogging war; he’d said it himself.
Another burst of orange sparks smearing across the sky marked a second Gotha in trouble. Like sharks smelling blood the little Camels turned on it, pouring more and more rounds into the flames. The entire upper wing broke free of its moorings and the nose dipped. Still the bullets punished it until it was just a wreckage of canvas, wire and wood, falling to earth.
Schrader’s Giant appeared to give a screech of pain and two hot balls of metal splintered part of the cockpit glass and thudded into the floor. A small fire started and Schrader grabbed the extinguisher, dousing the flames before they could take hold.
‘Jesus, she’s gone fuckin’ heavy,’ said Deitling.
‘Rudder?’
‘Aerlions. Something must have bent.’
Schrader stepped up the small ladder and opened the upper hatch, bracing himself as the slipstream tried to pluck him out. Up there was the harness for Borschberg, and the dorsal machine gun. The MG had gone, the mounting blown away. So had Borschberg. All that were left was two ragged straps. Something sticky sucked at Schrader’s gloves as he pulled himself further up, squinting into the night. The top of the fuselage was dotted with blood and gobbets of the gunner. Schrader could only hope the man had been dead before the wind threw him into empty space.
Up above him, even over the roar of the wind and his own growling engines, he imagined he could hear the distinctive throb of a Sopwith’s radial engines. More tracers stitched beautiful patterns across the heavens. He heard rounds puncture the wood and canvas upper wing, and a wire pinged free with a high-pitched whoosh, biting into his cheek as it snaked free.
Schrader slid down the ladder and pulled the hatch closed behind him. He took off one of his gloves and touched his face. The fingertips glistened red.
‘See anything?’ asked Fohn.
‘Borschberg’s gone.’
‘Shit.’
‘Take her low,’ he shouted to Deitling.
‘How low?’
‘All the way.’
‘We’ll lose the defensive diamond.’
Schrader pulled his glove back on. ‘That was the defensive diamond hitting our wing. We’re shooting at each other. Take her down. Kiss the waves, if you have to.’
I’ve lost one man, he thought. I’m not losing another. We aren’t going to die. Not tonight. It sounded like wishful thinking, with the night air whistling through the holes in the Giant’s skin and the
pilots sweating as they fought with damaged control surfaces.
Schrader stumbled back to his seat as the nose dipped. It was a risk. If the Camels noticed him breaking formation and decided he was a lame duck, they’d come after him. And now he had no dorsal gun with which to defend himself. But even if they did swarm down on him, at least his actions might save the rest of the squadron. The British didn’t have unlimited fuel or bullets, so by coming after him they might use their last gasp.
On the other hand, firing tracers in the dark tended to blind the pilots. Perhaps they wouldn’t see a shadowy shape breaking free and diving down towards the sea. And even a Giant was difficult to spot against the waves, far more difficult than with a star-filled sky as a backdrop.
Schrader held his breath, expecting at any moment to feel the impact of the twin Vickers the Camels had mounted on their stubby noses.
Above, another plane, friend or foe, it was impossible to tell, turned into a flaming comet, describing a slow arc as it fell towards the waiting sea, turning over and over as it did so.
Dear Herr and Frau Borschberg – it is with great regret that I have to inform you—
Schrader felt a buffeting as a small, nimble plane came past them, close enough to hear the engine note and feel its prop wash make waves for the Giant. The front gun gave several short barks. Schrader looked out through the side panel of the cabin.
He could see the RFC biplane clearly, hooked at the port side, running parallel with them. It was impossible for either of the remaining machine guns to fire at him without risking stray rounds splintering their own frame. On the top wing of the British plane he could make out the silhouette of a Lewis gun. Camels usually had Vickers firing through the propellers. So that was how they stopped the blinding of the pilots, by putting the muzzle up above, out of sight. Clever. But what was pilot playing at?
Below, he could see the glint of the sea, the spume of waves. He looked back at the Camel. The pilot, he realized, was waving. A gloved hand, penduluming back and forth in the moonlight. Perhaps he was out of ammunition. Or the Lewis had jammed. Either way, he was letting them know that God was on their side. Such chivalry was once the norm, but gruelling conflicts like Bloody April had swept away any foolish notions of honour between pilots. It was kill or be killed. But clearly, there was at least one British flyer who thought otherwise.
Schrader pressed his own hand against the cockpit glass. The Camel waggled its wings and then banked away, gone, as if plucked on a string.
Schrader let his breath out and replugged his heated suit in as the Giant levelled out. He smoothed out his charts and picked up a pencil.
Maybe it hadn’t been wishful thinking. Maybe they weren’t going to die that night.
The canal tunnel that ran from the rear of St Luke’s Gardens to the Wenlock Basin was not marked on any map. It passed, in a straight line, under East Road, Nile Street and Shepherdess Walk, before it connected, through a barred gateway that could be locked shut, with an arm of the Grand Union Canal.
Garavan let Crantock navigate through the tunnel, while he checked that there were indeed half a dozen of the giant rolls of bank paper underneath the tarpaulin, as the nightwatchman had promised. Enough to print thousands and thousands of pounds, far more than they had been forced by weight and bulk to leave behind.
He made his way to the rear of the barge once he was satisfied, crouched low as the boat chuffed on through darkness. Ahead there was only a tiny arch of grey, as small as a postage stamp, suggesting that this black passage had a terminus.
Garavan could feel water dripping on his face from the dank bricks above them and he wiped it away. It had been a shame to abandon Amies, but once he had heard voices and shots, he knew the game was up. They had locked shut the gates to the canal wharf from the outside and steered the barge into the tunnel, its engine masked by the machines still generating the Gotha Hum and the blasting of the anti-aircraft guns.
Now he had to trust to luck. That nobody would expect him to make a getaway at four miles an hour. He was banking on their going after the Canadians in the Underground. The deserters would put up a fight. That would keep the Bank’s soldiers busy.
Garavan knew he had been too clever. And too greedy. He could have carried out the robbery without the kidnappings and the mutilations, perhaps. His plan had been to send a full account of how he had done it to the damnable Watson and Holmes, the men who had, off and on, dogged his footsteps – or Frank Shackleton’s – ever since he had lifted the Irish Crown Jewels. A little gloating was in order. It had always been his weakness. Hell, it was a Shackleton family weakness. They loved a drama, loved a tale to tell.
But the love of pain, inflicted and sometimes even received, that one was all his own.
But other people had let him down. Crantock and his bloody wife. Well, all he needed Crantock for was to unlock the gate at the far end of the tunnel – the man had been canny enough not to reveal where the key was hidden – and then Garavan could dispose of him. There were men at the wharf on City Road – good men, Irishmen – who would help him unload the barge and transfer the paper bales to a truck.
Then Mrs Crantock could get on with being a real widow.
The pale half-circle of the exit grew larger and Garavan could make out the bars now. Crantock cut the throttle to idle and nudged the bow towards the wall of the tunnel.
‘Take the tiller,’ he said to Garavan. ‘I’ll open the gate.’
Garavan did as instructed and the nightwatchman scampered to the front of the barge. Garavan heard the scrape of a key and the squeal of hinges as the gate was swung back. ‘Bring her up,’ Crantock shouted.
Garavan gave the engine a little more power and the barge moved forward, scraping the wall as it went.
Crantock relieved him of the tiller and Garavan stepped away.
‘Tricky bend out of this basin,’ said Crantock. ‘Then we’ll be fine. About four hundred yards to the wharf
Garavan wasn’t really listening. There was sporadic gunfire from the anti-aircraft batteries but he was aware that the Gotha Hum had stopped. They must have found the machines that generated the noise, the devices designed by the acoustician Bradford. Under duress, that was. He had proved most uncooperative when confronted with his task. It had taken all Garavan’s powers of persuasion to cajole him into creating the Gotha Hum machines.
One thing was for certain, the German raids had made disposing of bodies like Bradford’s relatively straightforward. They had used the bombings to get rid of the acoustician and then that private detective Watson had put on the tail of Crantock and his Mrs. After all, who questioned too much about the circumstances in which a man had clearly been killed in an air raid? Well, it turned out that Watson and Holmes did, he thought bitterly.
The nightwatchmen leaned hard on the tiller and throttled back, bringing the barge round to clear the bend into the main canal. Some way to the east, Garavan could see flames on the water. A warehouse was burning.
Once they were straight, Garavan reached over and killed the engine.
‘What you doing?’ asked Crantock.
‘This is where you get off.’
‘What?’ Crantock looked disbelievingly at the gun in Garavan’s hand. ‘I can’t swim.’
‘You won’t have to worry about that. You’ll be dead before you hit the water.’
‘It’s not fair—’
‘Neither was you contacting y’bloody wife.’
‘I love her. I was doing all this for her. I told you I should’ve stayed on in place till tonight, but you didn’t trust me not to act suspicious. It’s your fault. But you wouldn’t understand that.’
‘No. I wouldn’t.’ Garavan lifted the pistol and Crantock was about to close his eyes when he saw the Irishman’s skull shatter and watched his blood and brains escape into the night air.
THIRTY-EIGHT
The acrid smell of burning hung across all of London, even penetrating the sitting room of 2 Upper Wimpole Street, wher
e Sherlock Holmes and Dr Watson sat, having finished a late breakfast. Holmes had been given the spare room by Mrs Turner and had spent the night there, while Watson had eventually located and boarded the stolen barge, which had been found drifting, jammed at the entrance to Wenlock Basin.
‘So,’ said Holmes, ‘there was only the body of Garavan on board?’
‘And the rolls of special paper. And the plates.’
‘And money?’
‘No, all the cash had disappeared.’
‘It’s no great amount for the Treasury to lose,’ said Holmes. ‘It’s more important that they know counterfeits will not be flooding the country. I have suggested to Bullimore that they put a watch on Crantock’s wife. He will come for her sooner or later.’
‘Yes, he seems the only loose end now the main perpetrator is dead. Bizarre, though. Garavan’s death.’
Holmes shook his head. ‘I think not. As I said . . .’
‘What goes up . . .’ offered Watson.
‘Exactly.’
Watson’s examination of the mutilated body had indicated that Garavan had been struck by a falling piece of shrapnel, probably part of an anti-aircraft shell. It had sliced into his cranium, killing him instantly. Crantock had been saved by the country he and Garavan had set out to rob.
Holmes lit a pipe. ‘I have a theory.’
‘About?’
‘The events of the past few weeks.’
Watson leaned forward in anticipation. ‘You think there is more to all this than meets the eye.’
‘I am certain of it. Germany has a plan to force Great Britain to the negotiating table. To starve her. To bomb her. To sink her ships, burn her warehouses, terrorize her people.’
‘You think Garavan was working for the Germans?’
Holmes nodded. ‘Perhaps, through Irish intermediaries. I think the Germans would have won whatever the outcome of his scheme – the aim of which was not to make Garavan rich but to destroy faith in the new paper money. Given that Britain’s gold reserves are perilously low . . . our credit with the Empire and the Allies would reach rock bottom.’