The Great Darkness

by Jim Kelly

  She tucked the soldier in. ‘Odd thing is, a sergeant turned up and got very officious, said the work the lad had been on was classified. He told his pal to get back to barracks. He had the nerve to tell me not to repeat anything I’d heard, or might hear, overnight. I said he could relax because I’d given the patient a decent dose of morphine, so he’ll be out cold until dawn at the earliest. I think it’s the least he deserves.’

  Satisfied the patient was comfortable, Claire fetched a junior nurse from the ward kitchen where she was washing bedpans and installed her at the nurses’ station, explaining that she was ready to take her half-hour break.

  Brooke followed her to a side door which led out onto the fire escape. A corkscrew iron staircase led down to the ground, then two more flights descended into a basement.

  An iron door was marked STRICTLY NO ENTRY.

  Claire unlocked the door.

  The boiler room was dense with a dry pulsing heat. Claire had brought with her a fresh towel. Brooke pressed his back against the metal boiler and felt the burning metal, the gentle rumble of the hot pipes, the subtle flexing of water close to boiling point.

  ‘It might be time to leave the river to itself for another year,’ said Claire, pushing away his hands to dry his hair, and unbuttoning his shirt.

  She’d brought him here before.

  ‘Did you bolt the door?’ he asked, kissing her on the lips. ‘We wouldn’t want to traumatise the night watchman.’

  ‘I’ve locked the door, Eden. I am a practical and meticulous nurse. It says so on my latest record card, and that’s a doctor’s opinion, so it must be true.’

  Later, holding each other in the half-light, Brooke broke a long silence. ‘Tonight, from the river, I saw a platoon of soldiers on St John’s Wilderness. They’d been digging pits. Doric, who is omnipotent as you know, says the rumour is the army’s burying rubble from bomb sites.’

  ‘Bomb sites?’ asked Claire, standing up and letting her uniform fall past her shoulders, her arms held high. ‘There’ve been no raids. There’ve been sirens, and alarms, and quite a bit of hysteria, but no planes.’

  ‘Doric says the government’s hushing it all up. That there’s casualties, and the mangled dead are mixed up with the rubble, and there’s no time to sort it all out and besides they want to keep it a secret, to maintain morale. It sounds like hogwash to me, but could you ask around? Doric heard the raid was in Scotland, Glasgow maybe, but he’d also heard it might be the East End. If it’s true, the doctors will know. The survivors must have been treated somewhere.’

  ‘I’ll ask,’ she said. ‘But you know as well as I that curiosity is going out of fashion.’

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Romsey Town, a working-class district of narrow streets set in a ladder pattern, lay just beyond the railway line, reached only by a Victorian bridge of rusted iron. Once crossed, the medieval city was left behind, while ahead lay an industrial suburb, grimy terraced houses set in cheerless rows, smoke seeping from chimney pots. A Methodist chapel stood sentinel by the bridge, opposite a pub, the Earl of Beaconsfield, its windows etched with enticements to drink: Windsor Ales embellished with a scene of the great castle, Lamb’s Navy Rum adorned with a Union Flag. A slit between two blackout screens revealed the convivial light within.

  Built for railway workers, the ‘town’, as it was known, was impregnated with coal dust from its own humble fires and the steam trains which thundered past on the mainline to London, or shunted trucks in the marshalling yards. Every stone and every brick was black, slightly sticky to the touch, and sooty. The drifting smell of cheap coke, mixed with fumes belching from the sugar beet factory, gave the district a raw, burnt stench.

  At ten-thirty a disparate chorus of bells marked closing time in a string of corner pubs. A light flashed on the pavement outside the Earl as three men spilt out into the night, fastening up coats and putting up collars, the door hastily locked behind them from the inside.

  ‘Right, let’s do it,’ said Henderson, the largest of the three, and in charge. With Lauder, the Scot, and Popper, the doctor, Henderson represented the committee of the East Cambridge & District Branch of the communist party. In the Earl, they’d talked about the football, carefully avoiding politics or any mention of their plans for the rest of the evening. The Soviet invasion of Poland, in cahoots with Hitler, had placed the Party in a precarious position. Whose side, the newspapers asked, was the Party on? Arrests had been made in London, national leaders interrogated, and there was talk in parliament of banning the Party altogether. If proscribed they’d have to go to ground, so no point now in getting noticed.

  The three of them stood waiting for their eyes to get used to the dark, then Henderson led the way down a side street to a dead end, where an alleyway cut along the backs of the houses to a school and then to the top of a railway embankment which looked over the yards.

  A man stood waiting on the girder footbridge which spanned the main line.

  ‘Chris?’ called Henderson.

  ‘It’s me,’ said the young man. ‘Can you see it? There’s a fire up at the station. Do you think it’s a bombing raid?’

  ‘I doubt it,’ said Henderson. But they all stopped on the bridge, examining the sky, which pulsed gently with a yellow glow.

  ‘We need to get on …’ said Henderson, leading them down the steps on the far side and over a series of rails, past a looming water tower, to a large shed built of corrugated iron. For a minute he wrestled with the lock, before ushering them inside, where his torch revealed a tank engine on rails set in the centre of a concrete floor. Producing candles from his pocket, he asked Popper to set them out, while Lauder was instructed to get chairs.

  Finally, Henderson produced a wooden box from a store, set it down on the floor, then climbed aboard the tank engine and perched on the running board above the wheels, his legs dangling.

  ‘Right, let’s use our imagination, boys,’ he said. ‘We are now sitting in the splendour of court number one at the assize on Market Hill, Cambridge. I’m on the bench, Judge Henderson presiding. Christopher Childe, you’re in the dock. So stand on the box. Tomorrow, this will all be for real.’

  Childe nodded. Popper and Lauder took front row seats.

  ‘At the moment, Chris, you’re registered as a conscientious objector. A conchie. A coward, like the rest of us. Conditionally registered. We all know what that means. You have to do what they bloody tell you to do. Hard labour. Tomorrow the military tribunal will sit in the court and decide if you are worthy of unconditional registration as a conscientious objector. That would mean you’d be free to work for the Party full-time … A rehearsal like this increases your chances of success in front of the tribunal fourfold, Popper’s got figures from Party head office to prove it. This …’ He spread his arms. ‘This is your rehearsal. You’re a lucky man.’

  ‘Can I sit down?’ said Childe. In his early twenties, he had a pale round face with a small button nose, below which was a thin moustache. A receding chin thrust his lips forwards, so that they caught the candlelight.

  ‘Pull yourself together,’ said Henderson. ‘You’ll have to stand tomorrow. And stop snivelling. I know we’re all conchie bastards, but it’s a cliché.’

  They all nodded, and watched as Henderson took a copy of Peace News from his pocket and threw it down on the floor as if it were evidence. The paper was produced nationally to rally support for pacifism.

  ‘It might be a rag, boys, but it reaches out to the proletariat,’ said Henderson. ‘Most of all, it’s read, unlike most of the tedious screeds churned out by the Party. That’s why we help distribute it. If Chris is successful tomorrow we can use Peace News, comrades, to reach the masses. We can print our own page, a news-sheet, and slip it inside. We need you, Chris – full-time – as editor and printer.’

  Childe tugged at the collar of his overalls. The paleness of his face was in stark contrast to what looked like dirt on his forehead. His hair, short and tufted, looked dusty too, and his fi
ngers were grimy, the nails black.

  ‘First things first,’ said Henderson. ‘For the real thing – and it is tomorrow – have a bloody bath.’

  ‘I’ve been digging trenches,’ said Childe.

  ‘Exactly. That’s why we need you to go in front of the tribunal.’ Henderson cracked his knuckles. ‘So, first off, they’ll ask you to read your personal statement. Frankly, they won’t take in a word. What’s important is the answers you give to their questions, and your demeanour. You have to convince them you have genuine issues of conscience.’ Henderson coughed. ‘Let’s get started. Do you object to taking life?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Are you a vegetarian?’

  Childe relaxed slightly, shifting his weight onto his left leg. ‘That’s a puerile question. I object to—’

  ‘Never question the questioner,’ shouted Henderson.

  ‘They hate it,’ said Popper. ‘It’s not a debating society. It’s not like the last show, Chris. They’d have shot you in 1914. There’s a real chance they’ll let you get on with your life. So calm down.’

  ‘You have a sister?’ asked Henderson, his voice taking on a hostile edge. ‘If a German soldier was raping her in front of you, would you use violence to help her?’

  Childe’s eyes filled with tears. ‘I need to learn answers, to prepare a crib …’ he said.

  ‘That’s the last thing you need to do, laddie,’ said Lauder, slumped back in his seat. ‘They hate that. They’re not military types. There’ll be two from civvy street. Bound to be a lassie as well …’

  ‘And try to stop shaking, Chris,’ said Popper.

  ‘I can’t stop shaking,’ said Childe.

  He stood down from the box. ‘I’ve had a real shock tonight. They marched us out to St John’s Wilderness to dig pits on the riverside. They said soldiers would come later and that they needed the pits. But they didn’t say what for. We dug for three hours …’

  Lauder scoffed at Childe’s aversion to hard labour. ‘What did you expect, lad? A cushy number?’

  Childe shook his head. ‘My answer to all this, to all of you, is that it doesn’t bloody matter what the tribunal says because I’ve seen something tonight that makes it clear it’s too late. The war that’s coming, comrades, they won’t need soldiers. I saw it with my own eyes. I know what they’re burying in the pits …’

  CHAPTER SIX

  The mist, thickening, was now flowing like a river in the empty streets: skeins of it, like shrouds in sinuous procession, nosing round corners, licking damp archways of stone, insinuating itself under doors. Brooke turned up the collar on his greatcoat and headed back towards police headquarters. Claire always said she could spot him in a crowd from a hundred yards: his hands thrust deep in overcoat pockets, steps marking a relentless line, so that his silhouette appeared to narrow to a single point of contact with the earth, his hat brim folded down.

  Moonlight revealed King’s Parade, a line of grand shops and cafes which faced a series of wide lawns, beyond which rose the splendour of the colleges. To Brooke, the street was always uplifting because it reminded him of a seafront: stately Eastbourne, perhaps, or Regency Brighton. The parade looked out to sea, but found instead the clipped lawns, the honeyed stonework and tracery of the medieval facades beyond. The wide-open space, the starry sky above, stood in contrast to the narrow alleys and passages of the rest of the old city.

  A great horse chestnut, set against King’s College Chapel, had gathered the mist around its roots so that the soaring stonework appeared to float free of the earth, the four great pinnacles hooked, perhaps, on the stars. The silver grey of the great tree’s boughs was a match for the stone of the college, as if it too had been carved by the medieval masons. A century old, it was one of the city’s treasures, the highest branches stretching up a hundred feet, supporting the autumn leaves. But even here the war had left its mark: grey felt and tape obscured the chapel’s towering East Window, the precious medieval glass whisked away to safety in the city’s cellars.

  Brooke walked to the Bull Hotel, its windows shuttered, and turned towards Silver Street bridge, college walls pressing in on either side, so that he was able to stretch out his arms and touch both sides at once. Ahead he could just see a police radio car at its appointed time and place on the bridge, the half-masked tail lights shining feebly through the mist.

  A uniformed driver sat at the wheel, an elbow on the open window ledge, filing in his logbook, watching Brooke’s approach in the rear-view mirror.

  ‘Take a break, Constable,’ said Brooke. ‘I need the radio.’

  The young officer jumped out.

  Slipping into the seat, Brooke lifted the receiver off its cradle and put his glasses on the dashboard. The windscreen was fogged with fallen ash from the incinerated balloon, so he swished the flakes aside with the wiper. For the first time that night he saw his breath, misting the glass.

  ‘Brooke on four,’ he said, against a backdrop of static, repeating the call-in three times, finishing each time with an obligatory ‘over’. Impatient, he fished out the pewter hip flask Claire had given him that Christmas and took a sip of water.

  Still no answer: the duty sergeant was no doubt cradling a mug of tea, trying to judge the right moment to pick up. Or was he below in the cells?

  In the slit-beams of the car’s headlights, Brooke could see the constable at the rail of the bridge, the mist waist high, flowing gently from south to north, enveloping the unseen bridge, leaving him in mid-air, and mid-stream.

  ‘Desk here, sir. Over.’ Brooke recognised the voice: an elderly sergeant they’d enticed out of retirement to swell the ranks of the Borough, depleted by conscription.

  ‘Anything on the station fire, Sergeant?’

  ‘Auxiliary Fire Brigade has two engines at Kew’s, sir, the flour mill by the station. County brigade in support. I’ve sent the night shift pair from here on foot. We’re told it’s barrage balloons from down the London line, apparently the cables broke. One’s drifting north, so I’ve rung Ely, Downham, even Lynn. If it keeps going it’ll be at sea by dawn. One balloon at St John’s College, tangled up with the chapel roof. The porter’s got the master out and he says they can deal with it once there’s some light.’

  ‘Any customers downstairs in the cells?’ asked Brooke.

  ‘Three drunks, but we’ll let them go in an hour. Wardens report the streets are empty. But who knows. Broad daylight may tell a different story. One thing …’

  The rest was lost in a burst of static.

  Brooke got him to repeat.

  ‘Foot patrol – PC17 – called in from the police box outside Shire Hall, up near the Castle. He found three lorries stopped on the up-slope a couple of hours ago. Drivers having a kip. He says their papers look dodgy, so he’s taking down particulars. I said I’d check out the haulage firm in the directory, but there’s nothing in Kelly’s. The address on the side of the lorries is York. I’d ring the nick there but the lines are down. I’ll keep trying. Over.’

  PC17, Brooke recalled, was just out of training and heading for military call-up by Christmas. The name eluded him, but he recalled the file: previous occupation register office clerk, at home with documentation, forms, signatures, permits, regulations.

  So what was ‘dodgy’ with the lorry drivers’ papers?

  ‘I’ll wander over,’ said Brooke, cutting the line. He’d had in mind taking one of the cells for an hour, but the thought of those three lorries, parked in the shadowy night, changed his plans.

  The radio car’s constable was still on the bridge. When he saw Brooke, he ditched the cigarette in the water with a dart-like action.

  ‘Sir,’ he said, standing straight.

  Brooke’s reputation went ahead of him: brisk, impatient, he had no time for fools, or the slipshod. The detective’s ability to spot bullshit was also a local legend. Keeping out of Inspector Brooke’s way was widely seen as a valuable career strategy.

  ‘It’s PC Woods, isn’t it?’ he
asked.

  ‘Sir.’

  ‘Later, after the sun’s up, stretch your legs along the riverbank, north of Trinity Bridge.’

  ‘I’m supposed to stay this side of the river, sir. Car three’s …’

  ‘I know that,’ interrupted Brooke. ‘But we’re police officers, Constable. Not bank clerks. Do you think all the crooks stay on this side of the river too?’

  ‘Sir.’

  ‘Right. So, take a walk along the west bank. Keep your eyes open. I saw a platoon of soldiers out there digging at midnight. See if you can spot the pit, anything else that catches your eye. Leave me a note, my desk, before you knock off. Got it?’

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  The three lorries had pulled over on the left-hand side of Castle Hill, a wide street which rose up from the misty river towards a rough circular grass mound upon which stood the medieval remains of the city’s once imposing fortress, now co-opted as the county jail. The lorries faced uphill, as if heading out of town. The street, of several pubs, a brewery and a sawmill, lay still in the moonlight. A red gas lamp had been lit and posted at a junction halfway up, casting a warmer patina over the scene.

  Ascending the hill on the pavement, Brooke found the driver asleep in the first lorry, slumped forward, the moonlight catching false teeth thrust slightly forward of the lips. Fifty, fifty-five, with a heavy head, his face was fleshy, the folds of skin falling to a double chin pressing down on his chest.

  The next cab was empty, the passenger door wide open. A cigarette smouldered in an ashtray set by the gearstick. Moving on to the last lorry, Brooke heard voices and, coming level, found a police constable standing in front of the cab, taking notes, talking quietly to a man in worker’s overalls.

  The constable saluted. ‘PC Cable, sir. This is Mr Turl, charge hand for …’ He checked the paperwork. ‘Turl Haulage, of York.’

  ‘What’s the problem, Cable?’ said Brooke, taking a step back, giving Turl a half-smile.