The Great Darkness

by Jim Kelly

  The driver was five foot eight or nine, with a very light build, small head, black hair with a widow’s peak, maybe twenty-five years of age. An open face, deferential, almost submissive. Brooke thought he was very young to be a charge hand, and might be the owner’s son, given the company name. His limbs hung loose in baggy overalls, large hands working a rag, giving the impression of restrained energy.

  He should be in a uniform in France, thought Brooke, but then recalled that road haulage was a reserved occupation. If the fighting started in earnest such dispensations would not last.

  ‘It’s the paperwork, really,’ said Cable. ‘It’s just a bit of a mess. I’ve rung in some details to the desk to see if they can cross-check the basics.’

  He nodded over the road. A police box stood in the shadows of a tree, offering a landline to constables on the beat, a first-aid kit and a fire extinguisher. Rumours at the Borough suggested several were fitted with a paraffin stove for brewing tea on cold nights, and even the occasional bottle of beer. A faint light showed from the half-open door.

  ‘Sergeant said he’d ring the box if he gets anything,’ added Cable, handing Brooke the vehicle log book. ‘ID card’s fine. I’ve not checked the other two. Goods were picked up from a depot in north London, medical supplies and clothing, en route to a store at Goole docks, on the Humber. Hunter’s Shipping. Ouse Wharf. The full address says South Riding.’

  Cable looked up, incredulous at the error. ‘It’s West Riding. East would have been an understandable error. But there isn’t a South Riding. Never has been.’

  Turl shook his head. ‘It’ll be Meg in’t office,’ he said. ‘Lass is getting married this weekend. Bit ditsy, mind. It’s her big day.’ He smiled at Brooke and there was a genuine warmth in the eyes. ‘Bit of a stunner, our Meg.’

  ‘Yorkshire lass, is she?’ asked Brooke.

  ‘Born and bred,’ said Turl.

  ‘So you think she’d know,’ said Brooke.

  Turl kept smiling.

  Cable ploughed on, ‘Two of the vehicle registration numbers don’t match the actual plates – one’s a number out, 3 for a 5, the other’s GJ, not SJ. The travel permits are fine, but the issuing stamps are smudged …’

  Brooke held the piece of paper as Cable played torchlight on the circular blue stamp across which had been scrawled an indecipherable signature.

  ‘Odd travelling at night. Especially tonight,’ said Brooke, studying the young driver’s cheerful face.

  ‘We’d pulled up. Bit of a kip until dawn. Then we’re off. Your man here woke me up. I was well gone. We got this far by eight. Driving on the curfew lights is dodgy, ’specially long distance. So we laid up. Bit of shut-eye.’

  ‘Your mate’s missing from the next lorry down,’ said Brooke.

  Turl looked blank. ‘Ginger? Weak bladder, that lad. He’ll be off down an alley. Nature’s call.’ He nodded his head as if agreeing with his own explanation.

  ‘What do you think, Constable?’ asked Brooke. ‘By rights we should keep them here until we’ve checked everything. But we can always get York to run the paperwork tomorrow. I’m sure it’s just a slip of the pen. You happy with that, Mr Turl? You’ll need to go to the station, present the documents.’

  ‘Not a problem, Inspector,’ said Turl.

  ‘We’ll just take a quick look at the loads,’ added Brooke. ‘Let’s start with Sleeping Beauty at the bottom of the hill.’

  Turl had started sweating, so that his clear skin shone, and the whites of his eyes were wide. ‘Nev having a kip, is he? It’s been a long day. Good luck waking him up.’

  Later, recalling the moment for Claire, Brooke was uncertain which happened first: either the light on the top of the police box flashed, or the phone began to ring.

  Whatever the trigger, the result was instantaneous: Turl ran. The word ‘greyhound’ didn’t do him justice.

  PC Cable set off in pursuit.

  Brooke walked quickly down the hill to the lorry at the bottom. The cab was empty; the sleeping driver had fled, the passenger door on the far side wide open.

  Three lorries, all padlocked. Three drivers, all gone.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  The Borough police force was based at the Spinning House, a one-time workhouse and prison, set on seventeenth-century foundations. It had been the university’s jail, where the proctors and their fearsome constables – the ‘bulldogs’ – had imprisoned prostitutes in a bid to protect the morals of students and scholars. The women were set to work on spinning wheels in a large room on the top floor, beneath a great oak roof. The Victorians had subsequently used the building to house the deserving poor and the destitute. The workhouse was just that: a place of toil, offered in exchange for thin soup and shelter at night. The original cells below were still in use and, according to several recent occupants, haunted by the ghosts of past prisoners.

  The facade of the building was of fine stone, elegantly simple, with small lancet windows on the ground floor below grander bays above. The door, set in an imposing archway, opened into a hallway of panelled wood, the station night desk barring the way forward to offices beyond.

  As Brooke arrived, the sergeant covered the mouthpiece of a phone pressed to his ear. ‘York’s adamant, sir. No such firm as Turl Haulage, certainly not on their patch. Which makes you wonder about the ID cards. Cable just rang in, by the way. Lost the driver, good and proper, out towards Bait’s Lock.’

  Brooke was impressed by PC Cable’s stamina. The lock lay out on the edge of the city, where the inter-war suburbs bled into the open fen.

  The sergeant finished with the station in York and dropped the phone on its cradle. ‘I’ve got everybody out looking, sir. But you know – needle, haystack, same old same old.’

  ‘Any progress on bolt-cutters?’ Brooke asked. ‘We do need to get inside those lorries, Sergeant.’

  ‘First thing tomorrow, sir. Garage is locked up till day shift comes on,’ the sergeant said, nodding in the direction of the station yard. ‘Before the war we had twenty-four-hour cover. But needs must. Radio car will keep an eye on the lorries on Castle Hill until the mechanics can jump-start the lot, bring ’em back here.’

  Brooke nodded. ‘That’ll have to be good enough. When you can spare someone, post them on the spot, will you? We’ve got three men on the run, I don’t want one back-tracking and driving off.’

  The sergeant looked at Brooke. ‘You alright, sir?’

  ‘I may borrow one of your cells, Sergeant. And a candle. I’m tired. It’s been a long night. Number six free?’

  The cell, at the end of a short corridor, consisted of a bare stone box with no windows, no ventilation, just a bunk and a clean bucket. It had been Brooke’s refuge many times.

  Lying down, he made a pillow of his coat, slipping a book out of his coat pocket, holding it up at an angle to catch the wavering candlelight.

  He read the title: Vagrants and Thieves Wanted.

  Each page carried a short note, a description and a mug shot, the book reissued every six months by the Home Office. He carried it always, filling spare minutes with a quick revision of the faces he’d memorised. The skill was not to study eyes, or lips, or broken noses, but to somehow register, and store, an image of the whole face. Brooke found that when he had to search a crowd for a robber, or a street for a thief, he could animate that image, turning it like a sculpted head, a three-dimensional creation of his own mind.

  He flicked through twenty pages, looking for the ghost of Turl’s whippet-like features, before he felt himself sliding away. He checked his watch, closed his eyes, and actually heard the book hit the floor before darkness descended. It was more like oblivion than sleep, and as he slipped away his limbs jolted, as if his body was in free fall.

  The last time Brooke had slept, in what his doctor liked to call the common or garden fashion, was in late October 1917. It was the night before his capture by the Turks in the desert, at an oasis fifteen miles east of Gaza. The Egyptian Expeditionary Force had
been on the road for three months, fighting its way east into Palestine, shadowing the construction of the new rail line from Alexandria. When a halt was finally called, some care had been taken in the setting up of a proper camp.

  Brooke’s batman had put sardine tins under each foot of the bed, filled with paraffin, to collect scorpions. The linen, which had been steamed in a tarpaulin ‘bath’ by the railhead, was crisp and white, the labels marked HOTEL BRISTOL, CAIRO. He’d enjoyed a glass of whisky and a cigarette – one of the elegant Black Russians his father had given him at the station in Cambridge when he’d waved him off. The entire effect, after a bath in hot water – admittedly under the stars – was of civilised luxury.

  The night air in Gaza had been cold. He’d fallen asleep in the act of turning his head away from his half-finished drink. Of fourteen hours’ sleep he recalled nothing. It was the last time he’d ever embrace slumber like that, as a fearless giving up of the day, as an innocent release. These days, when sleep came it was fitful and intermittent, sudden periods of total immersion lost between nightmares which left his heart pounding.

  He woke in cell six with a start, both legs kicking out. Looking at the candle stub, he checked his watch: six forty-five. He’d slept for thirty-one minutes. The sun would be up.

  He’d gone to sleep considering the lorries, and what might be stashed inside, and the missing drivers. He woke up thinking about the soldiers on the riverbank, wondering if PC Woods had found the pit on the riverbank meadows. The terrain, masked by willow and thorn, was a wilderness, but there had to be a pit, because they’d buried something.

  Either way he’d make it his business to ask questions up at military headquarters at Madingley Hall, and given the army’s bureaucratic obsessions, he’d take the time to put them in writing. He recalled the soldiers in the traces of the carts, and a fleeting coincidence: the soft guttural north country accent of the sergeant had its perfect echo in the mouth of Turl, the young man who had finally outpaced PC Cable.

  CHAPTER NINE

  Chris Childe, conscientious objector, lay awake in the dawn light of Romsey Town, haunted by the flickering images of a nightmare just passed: skeletons and corpses tethered by ropes in a stiff, mannered dance of death, watched over by hooded executioners. Up on one elbow, bathed in sweat, he drew comfort from the sleeping faces of his twin girls and his wife, all snug in the double bed. Outside, the only signs of life were the strange metallic percussion of a goods wagon on the railway, and the distant glass rattle of a milk float drawn by a plodding horse.

  Downstairs in the front room he found his typewriter. He heaved it into the kitchen, closed the door and briskly typed a terse statement outlining what he had witnessed the night before. What had Henderson, the Party chairman, advised? ‘If you won’t tell us, Chris, then tell London. Tell the Party. Write it up, stick to the facts, and keep them in the right order. Then give it to Vera – she’ll make sure it gets to headquarters at Cadogan Square. And keep a copy, but keep it safe.’

  The envelope sealed in his pocket, he closed his front door behind him and set out through the serried rows of poor terraced houses, over the iron bridge towards the old city, which lay before him, shreds of mist flying like flags from college spires. The air still carried the fine ash of the incinerated barrage balloon, the acrid smell of the fire on the morning breeze. The Great Darkness had given way to a misty, autumnal morning, but even now Childe could detect the gleam of a blue sky beyond, promising that the Indian summer might last. On Regent Street, an early bus clanged past, while a line of soldiers unloaded sandbags at the corner of Parker’s Piece.

  Turning into Babylon Street, he paused. This short cul-de-sac formed the heart of the city’s red-light district, a small quarter given over to prostitution. The houses stood five storeys tall, with deep basements and high attics. Even now, at eight in the morning, two men sat on the stone steps of one, smoking and watching him closely.

  Childe walked purposefully to number 12 and knocked.

  Waiting on the doorstep, he tried to recall the exact moment he’d realised Vera Staunton, branch secretary to the Party, was a member of the oldest profession. How had this knowledge become commonplace? In debates at weekly meetings she’d spoken up for women throughout the Empire, ‘subjugated by man and money’ to sell their bodies. Any direct acknowledgement she sidestepped, but no one doubted that she experienced the violent reality of the class struggle at first hand, a sharp contrast to the theoretical musings of the Party’s academics.

  Childe watched a figure approaching through the stained glass of the front door: shuffling, slightly bent, struggling with the latch.

  An old woman’s face appeared in the gap between door and jamb, bisected by a metal chain.

  ‘A letter, for Vera Staunton. I need to hand it over in person.’

  The woman shrugged and slid the chain, retreating to a door at the end of a tiled corridor. At the last moment, she turned to call back, ‘Go on up. Fifth floor, front room. Her name’s on the door.’

  Climbing the stairs, Childe met a man descending, one of Vera’s clients, perhaps, enveloped in a military greatcoat, chin down, a smart trilby wedged firmly in place. He stood to one side, and as Childe came level he tried to see his face, hoping to detect shame, perhaps, or a furtive hint of betrayal: but there was nothing, just the suppressed impatience of a middle-aged man having to wait, a transaction completed, money paid for services rendered.

  Staunton opened her door in a thin Chinese print nightdress. When she recognised Childe, she drew it tight at her throat. ‘Chris. What is it? What’s happened?’

  Childe gave her the envelope.

  ‘That needs to go to the chairman, to Harry Pollitt, at Cadogan Square,’ said Childe, stuck on the threshold. ‘Today, Vera, either by hand or post. I saw something they should know about, something important. I don’t know how you work it, Vera – with the Party. Is a letter alright? Should it go by registered post? Or do you take papers down? I could go down, in person, if you think that’s my duty.’

  ‘Calm down, Chris,’ she said, smiling. ‘Pollitt’s gone, anyway, for backing the war. I’ve got the new man’s name somewhere …’

  ‘They need to know now, Vera, quickly. Henderson said we can’t trust the phones …’

  Staunton held up a hand, and then a finger across her lips.

  She took his hand and drew him in, closing the door. Turning her back, she fussed at a record player until jazz filled the air.

  Coming back to him, she stood a few inches away, and it reached him then, the scent of the men who had gone before. What had Childe expected? Sweat, perhaps, and stale cigarette smoke. But this was less indelicate: scented soap, cologne, cigars.

  The music made a songbird in a brass cage beat its wings, so that tiny feathers fell, caught in the light from the window.

  ‘What does it say?’ she asked, holding the letter up, finding it sealed, placing a hand lightly on his shoulder.

  ‘I can’t tell you, not yet. We’re all agreed. London should know first. They must decide, the executive, at the highest level. It’s not a decision for us.’

  She weighed the envelope in her hand.

  ‘Have you made a copy?’

  Childe patted his jacket pocket and smiled.

  ‘I can’t go to London today,’ he said. ‘I’d take it myself, I would. But I’m digging this morning, the tribunal’s this afternoon, then I’ll have to go back to work …’ He checked his watch. ‘I can’t duck it. I need a reference for the tribunal. But the Party must know as soon as possible, Vera. Today, if we catch the post?’

  ‘You’re right. Best send a letter.’ She smiled, nodding. ‘Wait here,’ she added, retreating to a small side room, in which he’d glimpsed a single bed, a sink and a gas ring. He heard drawers being opened and closed. A light came on, and a chair grated.

  ‘One moment,’ she called.

  The main room was dominated by a double bed, across which had been laid several throws, a pile of cu
shions and a patchwork quilt. Besides the record player on its table, there was a drinks trolley and a table which held three ashtrays, all of them empty. A bookcase revealed random titles, the walls anonymous prints.

  Nothing gave a hint of Staunton’s own story.

  That first night, in the weekly meeting above the public bar of the Mitre, when they’d told her they needed her to join them in the Party, Henderson had asked the key questions: why had she worked for Peace News, why had she become a pacifist?

  Corporal Harry Staunton, Vera’s husband, had died at the Somme. Amid the carnage and the mud his body had never been identified amongst the corpses later buried in a mass grave. A letter from his commanding officer had failed to provide any details of his death, or any comfort. His unit had gone over the top at the sound of the whistle, and of forty-two men only seventeen had survived. The thirty yards won in the ensuing battle had been lost the next day.

  ‘I don’t believe in the glorious dead, do you?’ she’d asked them. ‘They left me a widow, with a son, and they left him so broken, ripped apart, that they couldn’t put a name to his body. So he’ll be in that pit with the rest, tangled up. They had the cheek to give him a medal, as if that helped me. No. I’m for peace. Peace at any cost.’

  Staunton appeared with the envelope neatly addressed to the Party’s London HQ.

  ‘I’ll post it first class, but I need stamps. We can’t trust recorded delivery, especially to Cadogan Square. And they’re watched, day and night, so I don’t want to go in person, not unless we have to.’ She checked a delicate wristwatch. ‘I must fly.’

  CHAPTER TEN

  Brooke ate breakfast in the Masonic Hall, a hundred yards from the Spinning House, requisitioned by the Ministry of Food to provide cheap meals on a mass scale for workers and soldiers. The windows of what was known as the British Restaurant were clouded with condensation. Early workers, and a handful of soldiers, ate at trestle tables. Brooke chose an egg from a hotplate swimming in lard, a rasher of bacon and two slices of toast, and pocketed his change. The tea, stewed, was pungent and tepid. He drank it, freighted with sugar, under a ceiling decorated with moulded plasterwork, depicting the elaborate symbols of the Masonic order: compasses and trowels, and an unnerving single eye set in a ceremonial triangle. He smoked a single cigarette, drawing the nicotine deep into his lungs.