The Great Darkness

by Jim Kelly

  ‘Police surgeon gave me ten minutes. Body appeared to have been “primed”, his word – grease maybe, a heavy engine oil. Signature killing, that’s the ticket, used by one of the gangs. They’ve never found the scene of crime, but they’re reckoning a garage sump, vehicle pit, that kind of thing. Roll the body in, there’s evidence of ligatures, add some accelerant, and then a match. Effective, sir, not a scrap of evidence. So, they did the obvious and checked out the Currie family garage,’ he said, brushing pastry flakes from his shirt.

  Edison consulted his notebook, set down beside his plate. ‘Bit of a tip. Moorfoot Motors, but the sign was new, and you could see the old name underneath: Loxley Garage, same as the name on the patched-up fuel tank underneath the lorry on Castle Hill. West Bar will get forensics to give the place a check but the place was dusty, so I don’t think we’ll get much. Currie didn’t die there.’

  He took a breath, forcing himself to sip his tea. ‘And they came up with an ID on our friend in the cells,’ he said. ‘By sight. Took them less than a minute. He’s a gang member. Real name’s Jack Gretorix. They think they know this Ginger, too – so they’ll keep an eye out. There’s a whole rat king of ’em.’

  Brooke smiled: it was such a good phrase – rat king – a tangle of vermin, teeth sunk into each other.

  ‘At least he told us his true first name,’ said Brooke. ‘That’s arrogance, of course. It’ll be his downfall.’

  Edison put his tea down and ran a finger through the gravy left on the plate.

  ‘They’ll help us if they can but they’ve got the Home Office on their backs,’ he said. ‘Government’s terrified of sabotage, that a Jerry spy might bomb one of the munitions factories. They’ve got this piece of kit, sir, in one of the steelworks, which can punch out a cam shaft for a Spitfire. One blow. Only one in the country. Whole war could hinge on it. A stick of high explosives and there’d be no new Spitfires in the air.

  ‘No police leave, everyone out on the streets, CID and uniforms, on the lookout for strangers. Which explains why the gangs are back in business.’

  For a moment they sat in silence.

  ‘If the meat was going north, and there’s more than one convoy, then they’d need a refrigeration plant,’ said Brooke. ‘A big one.’

  ‘They took a note on that. But as I say, sir, they’re stretched …’

  ‘I’ve just come from the autopsy on Chris Childe,’ said Brooke, checking his watch. ‘But there’s not much to know. A bullet to the brain is a bullet to the brain. And no gun found.’

  ‘I better turn in, sir,’ said Edison, standing. ‘I picked this up downstairs just now,’ he added, producing a note. ‘From County: they’ve found our Vera at last. Babylon Street, so much for door-to-door enquiries. Two previous convictions for soliciting out at Strawberry Fair. It’s a way back, mind you – 1920, 1921. Since then there’s nothing.’

  Edison checked his watch. ‘She’ll be working now,’ he said.

  ‘First thing, then,’ said Brooke. ‘And Edison …’

  ‘Sir?’ The sergeant leant on the door frame.

  ‘Well done.’

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  Brooke, on the bunk in cell six, closed his eyes and let sleep fall like a blow, obliterating his world: the narrow stone room, the medieval building above, the city beyond, his house by the river. This release came so rarely that he smiled as he fell away into the darkness.

  A confused dream threaded its way through his subconscious. A dark, grey sky lowered over a city that didn’t look like Cambridge. From a rooftop, he glanced up and realised they weren’t clouds at all, but balloons, massed in their thousands, jostling, and just beyond them, in the stratosphere, the sound of cart wheels turning: mighty, celestial cart wheels.

  Looking down, he saw a lake and, just beneath the surface, the pale outline of a woman swimming naked. Although her hair was dark he knew it was Claire. Gliding towards him, she reached the water’s edge and, hauling herself up on the bank, looked him in the face. In her eyes he saw fire, a single flame burning in each.

  He woke up and heard the echo of his own cry. For a moment he lay still, listening for movement through the stone wall from Turl’s cell.

  By his watch the time was four. Switching on the light in the outer corridor, he selected the key for cell five from the bunch he’d used to open six.

  This time Turl was ready for him.

  ‘I heard the scream,’ he said, nodding to the connecting wall with cell six. ‘Bad dreams?’

  ‘I promised I’d be back,’ said Brooke. ‘We try not to disappoint.’

  ‘No spotlight; you’re losing your touch.’

  ‘The wheels are in motion, Jack,’ said Brooke. ‘A new plan for a new man: Jack Gretorix. You’re a crook, Jack Gretorix. The police at West Bar know your face.’

  Brooke gave him back his tobacco and rolling tin.

  ‘Your confederate, Stanley Currie? I hope he wasn’t a friend, because he’s dead, Jack.’

  Turl couldn’t hide his reaction to the news, his skin stiffening over the bones of his face.

  ‘Body soaked in oil, then lit, as you predicted. So presumably he cocked up too. Not very forgiving, are they?’

  Gretorix just shrugged, but he didn’t deny knowing Currie.

  ‘So here it is, Jack. The time has come. I’m going to ring West Bar in the morning and say that I’m releasing you to their custody. You’ll go north. They’ll make it known you’re back on the manor. Then they’ll let you go. They’ll also make it known that you’ve given us names, places, times. That’s either going to loosen your tongue, or it’s going to lead with some certainty to a garage somewhere; you’ll have a mental picture, I’m sure. A garage with a sump or a vehicle pit. This is your last night here, Jack. After that, it’s out of my hands.’

  Turl ran a pale tongue along the edge of his cigarette paper. ‘Do what you want, copper. When I’m gone you’ll still be having the nightmares.’

  ‘True. But you’ll be in a grave somewhere on a hillside, Jack. Bunch of wilting flowers in a jam jar by the headstone. Think on that, Jack. And this: the world will be a better place when you’re gone. You know that, so do I.’

  He left him with the tobacco tin, as if a cigarette was his last wish before execution, and climbed the stairs.

  The sergeant on the duty desk said the night was a quiet one, but he’d been asked to point out a note from switchboard in Brooke’s pigeonhole which was untouched.

  Brooke retrieved the slip of paper. The call was timed for that day at five in the evening and was curt:

  Caller refused to leave full name or contact details but said the message was from the NIGHT CLIMBERS. Message related to Ernst Lux. ASK FOR MARCUS ASHMORE AT MICHAELHOUSE.

  Brooke wondered which one of Hay Fever’s thespians had broken rank. The message itself was startling enough: Marcus Ashmore, Jo’s older brother, was a research student, like Ernst Lux, at Michaelhouse College. Was he a night climber? Had he been aloft when the scientist fell to his death? What had his sister seen from her rooftop observation post?

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  Jo Ashmore had one shoe up on the parapet, binoculars to her eyes. She was scanning the western horizon, ignoring Brooke’s brisk arrival up the vertical ladder to her rooftop observation post.

  ‘The kettle’s in the hut,’ she said, without turning round. ‘Help yourself.’

  Even now, even here, she cut a stylish figure. Her gas mask sat nicely on the hip, perfectly judged, a cardboard box transformed into an item of fashion.

  He mashed tea in two mugs, using evaporated milk from a little can and adding sugar to both.

  ‘It had been bothering me,’ said Brooke, carefully. ‘The night climbers are back on the rooftops of the city but you haven’t seen them. And you’re such a diligent lookout.’

  She kept the binoculars to her eyes.

  ‘Does it matter?’ she said.

  ‘A man’s died.’

  She took up her mug of
tea.

  ‘The man we thought had been killed by the drifting barrage balloon had been climbing. He fell. Then someone dragged his body clear of Michaelhouse College, and dressed the corpse with a scrap of half-burnt latex. The town was covered in the stuff from the blimp that exploded by the station.’

  Brooke turned, sitting on the parapet. ‘I’ve just checked the victim’s file. It contains a plan of his set of rooms at Michaelhouse with the names of the other students pencilled in; my sergeant’s the painstaking type, slow but sure. Room opposite Lux’s is your brother Marcus’s. There’s a list of Lux’s friends and everyone thinks Marcus and he were close. There’s a girlfriend too, but she’s a bit shadowy. Marcus was a bit cooler about Lux, said they were colleagues, and that the American “kept to himself”, which is a bit of a tired cliché on the best of days.’

  Jo bent her head back to study the sky, where occasional stars fidgeted between clouds.

  ‘Which leaves me with the same question, and still no answer,’ said Brooke. ‘If the night climbers are back, why were they not spotted by a bright-eyed observer with her own rooftop eyrie?’

  To the south, the sound of a plane’s engine pulsed a few times, fading fast, but Ashmore didn’t react.

  ‘I must talk to Marcus, Jo. I don’t want to turn up at the college and set any bells ringing unnecessarily. I understand the risk: that if he’s caught, they could chuck him out, which would end his career. I don’t want to do that; I don’t need to do it. But I do have to talk to him. So I need a go-between. On this occasion, Jo, that’s you. I think that’s a pretty a decent offer from your brother’s point of view.’

  Jo went over to the conical post hut and came back with a half-bottle of brandy, pouring a shot in both their cups.

  ‘You’ve never asked, either you or Claire, why I’m up here, why I’ve left the life I had. Glamorous, wasn’t it? The parties, the late nights in London. I was having rather a good time.’

  She took a gulp from the mug, masking a wince as the spirit kicked home.

  ‘Oddly, all this’ – she indicated the OP – ‘is about keeping a low profile. Daddy’s words. You won’t have heard, it’s only important in the world he lives in, but the chair’s up soon and it’s his by rights. Professor Ashmore. Someone once asked me why academics are so nasty to each other. It’s because there’s so little at stake. I rather like that.

  ‘There was a scandal, Brooke, but not a public one. I caused this scandal. There, that’s me taking responsibility for my actions. That lifestyle of mine. I met a man at the Criterion one night. There’s a jazz club on Kingly Street, behind Liberty’s. I was seen with him, often seen with him. Mistakes were made. I took a risk. I needed help, medical help. It’s been …’

  ‘You don’t have to tell me, Jo.’

  ‘I’m enjoying telling you. No. Enjoyment’s not the word. But it is doing me good. You’re that kind of man, Brooke. People want you to think well of them. So this helps … I think I’m looking for forgiveness.’

  ‘You’re forgiven,’ he said.

  She knocked out a cigarette from a packet and, shading it from the night breeze, lit it in the dark shadow created by her lapel.

  ‘A public scandal, a hint of one, might have got back to the college, to the department.’

  ‘What of the man from the Criterion?’

  ‘If you could call him a man.’ She gave a bitter laugh, and Brooke thought he saw her future, after the war, regretting a night out in London.

  ‘I didn’t see the night climbers during the Great Darkness, but they often avoid the roofline, so that’s no surprise,’ she said. ‘But I’ve seen them this autumn. My shift is three nights on, three nights off. Marcus knows the schedule. Marcus is bored; he wanted to fight, but Daddy pulled strings. The government needs gifted mathematicians. So that’s him for the Duration.

  ‘So he’s kicking his heels, and prepared to risk it all, including Daddy’s reputation, with his silly, deadly night games. Perhaps we’re more alike than I ever thought. He wanted to climb, for the thrill of it. In his case, a slightly chilly thrill. I think it’s one of the few things that actually lights up his life. He’s tried gambling, but apparently it doesn’t even come close. He asked me to turn a blind eye, for Daddy’s sake, which was a nice touch.’

  She turned to face Brooke. ‘Sorry,’ she said.

  ‘Apology accepted.’

  ‘Where do you want to see him?’

  ‘My house. Tomorrow, at six? He can use the old gate from the meadow, the back door’s open. Tell him I just need to know the truth.’

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  Peter Aldiss was in what he referred to as the ‘roach room’, monitoring changes in habit related to light amongst several hundred specimens of the Blattodea. The study of circadian rhythms was a ceaseless labour. Brooke had long ago declined the opportunity of seeing them in the flesh, as it were. Even here, in the coldly lit laboratory, he thought he could hear the insects through the door, the strange, almost metallic rustle of their carapaces touching the concrete floor as they fled into the corners, like shadows. The fireflies, behind their door, were silent.

  Aldiss appeared with a single cockroach in a glass beaker which he set on the bench-top, cleaning his hands with a cloth.

  ‘Did you find our night climbers?’ he asked.

  ‘I’m close, thanks to you.’ Brooke sat at one of the sturdy laboratory benches. ‘You said you’d try and find out more about Lux’s work …?’ he asked.

  The manner of the American’s death, or rather its mysterious concealment, disturbed Brooke. He wanted to know more before confronting Marcus Ashmore. Had he simply dragged the scientist’s body away from the college buildings to protect his own academic career? It was the coincident death of Childe which rankled. Lux had been at the Galen that night, and he too had seen the film. Brooke was on the trail of a motive for something darker than an accident; could it lie in the American’s work?

  ‘I asked,’ said Aldiss. ‘They’re a bit jumpy, as you can imagine, the powers that be. The professorial class is not exactly given to idle chat. In the end I was honest, often a disastrous tactic, but it worked this time. I said you wanted to know about Lux’s field of study. The name helps. Your father’s still … what’s the word, Brooke? Revered.

  ‘So I was allowed an answer of sorts. Let me show you,’ said Aldiss, walking over to the light switches and plunging them back into darkness.

  ‘See?’ Aldiss’s voice came from the corner.

  What was clear was the illuminated face of his watch, swinging from side to side like a pendulum.

  The lights, restored, revealed the watch, free of the scientist’s wrist, now laid out on the bench like an exhibit.

  ‘They get women to paint the numbers on these watch faces, there’s a big factory in the States. United Radium. They’re the market leaders. So, imagine I am such a woman in such a factory …’

  He put his empty mug to one side and from the bench drawer produced the finest of paintbrushes.

  ‘I put glowing dots on the backs of the roaches with this. I can see certain individuals in the dark. Imagine my mug holds the paint.’

  He picked up the brush, put it in his mouth and drew it back through his lips, then pretended to dip it in the paint, acting out the precise craft of configuring the tiny numerals on a watch face. Then he licked the brush again, repeating the procedure.

  ‘Do that every time and you can imagine the result. They called them the radium girls, the victims. They were told the paint was harmless, so for fun they painted their nails, and lips. Piecework, of course, paid 1.5 cents per watch dial. Hundreds contracted radium poisoning. The symptoms are off the scale in terms of unpleasant, necrosis of the jaw being perhaps the worst. The company said those who claimed the radium was to blame had in fact contracted syphilis. Five took the company to court. They won, thank God. Now we know the truth.’

  ‘And Lux?’

  ‘An expert in bioluminescence. Nature’s natur
al electricity. Imagine, if we could work out how that works. Even I’d be grateful; I’d know how the firefly glows, Brooke. And no more horrific deaths at United Radium …’ He thought the idea through. ‘Better, no United Radium at all.

  ‘So that comprised his research area, and I’m sure there was ample funding, especially from the US. But the best chemists are here. So that was the link-up. When the war broke out he was persuaded to offer his services in some form to that great collective: the War Effort. In what form, I do not know. I am simply gratified he shared some of the findings of his own research with the rest of us. He put a circular out to all the labs last year on the hazards.

  ‘I never lick the brush.’

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  Claire was back on nights, and their house at Newnham Croft was intolerably empty without her, but Brooke sensed a further episode of momentary sleep was circling. He needed to find a place to rest. A return to cell six, beside the prisoner Turl, was out of the question. Leaving Aldiss to his roaches, he set off across Parker’s Piece, past Fenner’s, the university cricket ground, and down a cul-de-sac at the end of which stood a tall house. For a year now there had always been a night light at the bedroom window on the third floor of the narrow facade.

  The front door, unlocked, led into a hallway in which a mirror reflected Brooke’s silhouette: a tall figure, narrowing to the shoes, the hat slightly tipped forward. Climbing the steps softly to the third floor, he slipped into a bedroom across the landing where a body stirred in the dark shadow below the open window, the feeble night light on the ledge.

  ‘Frank,’ said Brooke, by way of introduction. ‘The bedside lamp?’ he asked.

  ‘Why not?’ said a voice, unfurred by sleep. ‘Light, dark, day, night. I’ve lost my place in the world.’

  Former Detective Chief Superintendent Frank Edwardes lay revealed by the electric lamp, propped up on a bolster, his usual pallor, a kind of damp marble, perhaps a little more pronounced than usual.