The Information Officer

by Mark Mills

  On the one hand, Max felt ridiculously naïve, a victim of the sort of propaganda he peddled; on the other, he drew comfort from his ignorance. The fact that he hadn’t got wind of such matters suggested that men such as Busuttil were accustomed to bringing a certain discretion to bear on their work. And that’s exactly what Max required of him.

  “Is it possible there’s already an investigation under way?”

  Busuttil shook his head. “I would know.”

  “Unless Defense Security’s handling it.”

  “I would know.”

  Lilian had briefed Busuttil thoroughly, but he wanted details, specifics, all of which he recorded meticulously in a scuffed notebook.

  He was intrigued by the idea that the killings might be the work of an enemy agent, but was more curious about the mechanics of the meeting in the lieutenant governor’s office. He asked for physical descriptions of all the men present.

  His most reassuring question, though, related to the torn shoulder tab discovered in Carmela Cassar’s hand. He wanted to know where someone would go for such a thing if he needed a replacement. Max was able to give him the name of the military outfitters in Valetta favored by the submariners, because Lionel was forever moaning about Griscti’s. Unforgivably, Lionel’s second bar had been on order there since the beginning of the year, as if shipping in his medal to the besieged island were more of a priority than fuel, arms, and essential foodstuffs.

  Busuttil made it clear to Max that time was against them and that the chances of success were low.

  “You should have come to Busuttil before.”

  “There are a lot of things I should have done differently,” said Max. “Look, I don’t know if Lilian said, but I can’t pay you.”

  A shade of disappointment darkened Busuttil’s solemn countenance. “And you?” he asked. “Are you doing it for money?”

  Max wouldn’t hear from him for twenty-four hours, Busuttil explained. Until then, he was to go about his business as normal. He advised against any contact with Lilian but didn’t forbid it.

  As he was leaving, he turned at the door. “There is one thing you can do for me. The Spitfires, are they coming soon?”

  “The Spitfires?”

  “You are the information officer, no?”

  “Believe me, that doesn’t count for much.”

  Busuttil accepted the brush-off with a gracious nod and made off down the stairwell.

  “Two days,” Max found himself calling into the darkness.

  “Two days?”

  “The ninth. Lots of them. More than sixty.”

  “Ohhhhh,” cooed Busuttil from below. “Ohhhh, that is good.”

  “We’ll see.”

  “No, they will see. In two days they will see.”

  There seemed to be a new lightness to the footfalls as they carried on down the stone steps.

  Max took Busuttil at his word, throwing himself into his work, losing himself in a fog of intra-departmental meetings. Generally, he regarded these as an almost complete waste of time. The deadwood had long since been cut out of the rotting ship he’d inherited. His staff was faultless to a man (and woman), their proficiency and dedication beyond reproach. They also worked demanding schedules that left little room for lunch, let alone a series of ultimately pointless get-togethers called by their boss. They didn’t need the distraction. He, however, did. Anything to keep his mind off Mitzi and the revelation she’d sprung on him.

  Shortly before midday he returned to his office and was surprised to find Freddie seated in an overstuffed chair near the window, nursing a mug of tea.

  “Very good,” he said, raising the mug.

  “Maria holds the best stuff back for visitors. We don’t get many.”

  “I thought it best to tell you face-to-face. Your face, for what it’s worth, has looked better.”

  “I didn’t sleep a wink last night.”

  “He’s left-handed.”

  It came from nowhere, and Max wasn’t sure if he’d heard right. “He’s what?”

  “Left-handed.” Freddie leaned forward in the chair. “I should have realized it before. It occurred to me only when I was in surgery yesterday. The wound in Carmela Cassar’s neck, it was on the right-hand side, her right, which means he used his left hand.”

  Max could still picture the long gash, the one inflicted by the bomb splinter that had sliced through her carotid artery. It was an image, he suspected, that would haunt his thoughts for a good long while.

  “Unless he was standing behind her.”

  “True,” conceded Freddie. “But unlikely.”

  Getting to his feet, he took up the ebony letter opener on Max’s desk to demonstrate his point. The carotid artery was set deep in the neck. To penetrate to the required depth demanded considerable thrust, to say nothing of accuracy, neither of which was afforded by taking up a position behind the victim. It was a convincing demonstration, if a little unnerving.

  “So, he’s left-handed,” said Max, taking the letter opener back.

  “How many left-handers do you know?”

  “Not many. We’re a significant minority.”

  “Exactly. It narrows the field considerably.”

  Max lit a cigarette. “I thought you didn’t want to have anything more to do with this.”

  “So did I. It seems I was wrong.”

  Freddie moved to the window, peering outside briefly before turning. “I’ve done a lot of thinking since the other day. Maybe it’s the way they treated us, but I don’t care anymore what they do to me. It’ll be their loss if they send me packing.” He hesitated, a flicker of uncertainty clouding his gaze. “Or maybe I’ve just had enough of it all and I’m hoping that’s exactly what they’ll do.”

  “You know that’s not true.”

  “Isn’t it? I’m tired, Max. I’ve been here too long, seen too much—enough for a lifetime. You have no idea how I spend my days.”

  “I can imagine.”

  “No you can’t. We ran out of morphine yesterday. It was only for a few hours till they sent some over from Saint Patrick’s, but it was long enough. You wouldn’t believe the screaming—like they were being fed thistles.” He paused briefly. “I learned something new, though. The power of the mind. You can inject a man with saline solution, and if you tell him it’s morphine, his body will believe you.”

  “Placebo.”

  “I’m impressed.”

  Max shrugged. “It’s what I do too—tell them it’s all okay and hope they’ll believe me.”

  Freddie gave a weak smile. “Yes, I suppose it is.”

  Max had seen Freddie low before, but he’d never heard him admit to it. His quiet and uncomplaining resilience had always marked him out from the rest of them. While Ralph kicked against the incompetence of his superiors and Hugh moaned on ceaselessly about the lack of recognition afforded to the artillery, Freddie had always just got on with the grim business of putting people back together.

  “Maybe Elliott was right. Maybe I am a moralist at heart.”

  Under other circumstances Max would have sought to buoy up his friend, to make him see sense. Selfishly, the prospect of an accomplice prevailed. It was good to have Freddie back on board. He reached for one of the phones on his desk and asked Maria to hold his calls.

  Freddie seemed genuinely shocked by the speed of developments, and not nearly as skeptical as Max had been about Elliott’s hypothesis that the murders might be the work of someone looking to frame the British for the crimes, some spy within their own ranks, or a Maltese fifth columnist.

  “It’s possible, I suppose. I can see it. He could have planted the shoulder tab in her hand.”

  “Or they. That was another of Elliott’s suggestions.”

  “Why’s he being so helpful?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Did you tell him about this detective …?”

  “Busuttil? No, and I don’t plan to until we know which side of the fence Elliott’s really sitting on
.”

  Not for the first time that day, Josef Busuttil found himself running for shelter. As if the running weren’t bad enough already—a stark reminder of just how rapidly his body was betraying him with age—all that the finish line had to offer was some gloomy ill-ventilated tunnel hacked out of the rock. He hated confined spaces. He hated them more when you had to share them with a swarming mass of humanity.

  Fortunately, this shelter was considerably larger than most. At least he wouldn’t have to spend the next hour or so upright, pressed tight with a bunch of strangers, like anchovies in a tin. The tunnel was wide, and judging from the run of paraffin lamps suspended from the vaulted ceiling, it stretched far beneath Valetta. The walls on either side of the central gangway bristled with iron bedsteads and wooden bunks. Here and there, niches had been hollowed out of the walls, some small, some large enough to accommodate a whole tribe of relations. Wherever possible, curtains had been rigged up to offer some degree of privacy.

  The smell, as always, hit Josef with the force of a blow, clutching at his throat—a fetid cocktail of paraffin fumes, garlic, sweat, and other human excretions.

  For those who had been bombed out of their homes, this was now their permanent residence. They were easy to spot; they were the ones already in place, staring at the plug of newcomers crowding the entrance. Some waved them deeper into the tunnel, welcoming them. Others were more mistrustful, or simply too weary to care. Outside, the bombs started to fall. The noise was met by a low murmur of prayers.

  Josef made his way to the far end of the tunnel, closing his mind to the musty pressure of the walls, challenging the fear he had always carried in him. Small children darted about, lost in their games. Old women, beads in hand, said the rosary before ramshackle shrines to the Virgin. Mothers poked at pans on sputtering Primus stoves. This is what we have become, he thought. This is what they have turned us into: a race of cowering cave dwellers.

  He found himself staring at a pretty and petite young woman perched on a bed, reading from a book to her two children. The girl was curled up on the lean mattress, head in her mother’s lap. The boy was seated on the hard floor, looking bored, eager to be elsewhere. Josef wondered what their story was, wondered if they would all live to tell it. The woman caught his eye and gestured him over, into their world. He hesitated. What kind of woman would make such an overture to a stranger when her husband was absent? A woman who had lost her husband, it occurred to him. But she was gesturing at the other bed now, and the prospect of taking the weight off his feet won through.

  “You look tired.”

  “I am tired.”

  “Then rest.”

  The boy glowered up at him mistrustfully.

  “Thank you.”

  He removed his shoes and lay down on the bed. There was nothing more he could achieve outside while the raid was on. Why not rest awhile? Besides, things had moved fast that morning and it was an opportunity to stop and take stock of the situation.

  His first port of call had been the Blue Parrot. It had a reputation as one of the more upmarket dance halls, although in the harsh light of day it was hard to imagine why. The place looked tired and cramped and dirty, its owner not much better. The owner’s startled reaction to a visit by an inspector from the CID suggested that he was guilty, though not necessarily of murder. Most places were running on black market booze by now.

  The man had clearly been suspicious of the questions put to him about Carmela, but he’d known better than to say so. Her tragic death had shocked them all. She had been a great girl, a little on the quiet side at first, but bright and eager to learn. Her earnings had improved steadily in the five months she’d worked there, and she’d twice pocketed half a crown in commission for persuading clients to buy bottles of champagne.

  Josef didn’t push it. He knew he’d be back later, after nightfall, when the place came to life. The real questions could wait till then, till the other hostesses were at work. They were the ones he needed to speak to, because his instinct told him that the killer had targeted Carmela right there in the dance hall, which meant that someone had seen him. Before leaving, Josef asked if the “officers only” door policy was strictly enforced. It was.

  Major Chadwick had been able to provide him only with the names of the other two girls who had died suspiciously, but within the narrow world of the Gut, it didn’t take Josef long to find out where the girls had worked. Dirty Dick’s and the John Bull were both down at the far end of the Gut, where the narrow street fell away sharply toward the nether regions of Valetta. Their location was significant. It marked them out for what they were: low-grade establishments that catered to “other rankers.” According to the wooden sign nailed to its barred and padlocked doors, Dirty Dick’s was Closed for Renovation—an amusing understatement; the top three floors of the building were missing, reduced to a tumble of rock and rubble and splintered beams.

  The John Bull, almost directly opposite, had been spared. It was a cellar bar, with steps leading down from the street to a recessed door set in a carved stone gateway. From here, more steps descended into the gloom. The place was far larger than it appeared from the street, a vaulted labyrinth of passageways and deep alcoves that incorporated the cellars of the two flanking buildings. The bar and the dance floor were at the back, where even at this hour of the day the only light came from a handful of paraffin lamps scattered about the place.

  It took Josef’s eye a few moments to adjust to the spectacle. The barman was busying himself with some glasses, feigning disinterest in the couple seated at the counter. The girls huddled at a nearby table were making no such pretence. They watched and whispered among themselves.

  The man at the counter was a British serviceman. He sat slumped on his stool, head bowed, sobbing quietly. His companion, a Maltese girl with bleached blond hair, had an arm around his shoulder. She was whispering to him, sweet words of comfort, but every so often she rolled her eyes with boredom for the amusement of her colleagues gathered at the table. They, in turn, struggled to stifle their giggles.

  Josef’s instinct was to take the soldier by the arm and lead him out of this den of harpies, but that didn’t fit with his mission. The table of girls eyed him with undisguised indifference as he wandered over to them. Even the lowliest British serviceman had twenty or so shillings a week to spend, which was far more than the average Maltese could muster.

  They perked up a little when he asked, “Thirsty?”

  He knew better than to order the drinks himself; their commission was what mattered to them. The youngest was dispatched to bring the refreshments, and Josef found a chair pulled up for him. He immediately turned his attention to the oldest, a baggy-eyed specimen in a grubby white frock. Win over the mother hen, and the others would follow.

  “What’s the story?” he asked her, nodding at the sobbing man.

  “He misses his wife.”

  It was a voice coarsened by drink and cigarettes.

  “You don’t say? Me too.”

  “So why aren’t you crying?”

  “You haven’t seen my wife.”

  He knew he had them when they laughed.

  “Where’s your wedding band?” asked mother hen, more practiced at such matters.

  “Sold, so that the poor orphan boys of Saint Joseph’s might eat.”

  This set them off again, although they sobered up fast when he raised the subject of Mary Farrugia. A few of them crossed themselves at the mention of their dead colleague. Josef made his play. He said he was Mary’s uncle, and he was there on a sensitive matter. It involved a pair of silver earrings, a gift to Mary from one of her customers just before her death. The family felt that the earrings should be returned to the British serviceman in question, the only trouble being that they had no idea who he was.

  This triggered a flurry of speculation around the table. Judging from the number of names bandied about, Mary Farrugia had been a popular girl with the clientele of the John Bull.

  “I think h
e might have been a submariner,” offered Josef, which was met with shrugs and blank faces. “Possibly an officer, unless she was lying.”

  “Well, they’re not supposed to come here, but they do.”

  “They dress down on purpose.”

  “They know where to come for a good time.”

  “A much better time.”

  “We can show you, if you like,” said one of the younger girls, a frail-looking creature who must once have been pretty.

  They were teasing him now, losing interest in his quest. He made one last effort to draw a name from them. When this failed, he made his excuses and left them to their drinks.

  Mother hen caught up with him near the entrance.

  “Tell me something—if you’re Mary’s uncle, then why weren’t you at her funeral?”

  She had him cold.

  “Are you a cop?”

  “Yes.”

  “What’s this about?”

  “Nothing that concerns you.”

  “It might.”

  “You know something?”

  “I know I have a nephew in prison.”

  Oh, so that was it.

  “What’s he in for?”

  “Looting.”

  Josef despised looters.

  “Some would say prison’s the right place for a looter to be.”

  “Some would say it’s no place for an eighteen-year-old boy who fell in with the wrong crowd and who’s learned his lesson.”

  Josef let the silence linger awhile. “It depends on what you’ve got.”

  “Will a name do?”

  “Maybe,” he said, trying to contain himself.