The Great Darkness

by Jim Kelly

  Not a cat, not a dog. Even the sky was empty.

  ‘Stay here; we’ll take a look,’ said Brooke.

  They left Aldiss at the gate too, and set off for the farmhouse, the face masks around their necks, but hanging loose.

  ‘Dr Comfort’s view is that it is pretty difficult to catch anthrax from another human being,’ Brooke explained. ‘All we need to do is avoid direct skin-to-skin contact, keep our distance if anyone coughs and resist the urge to accept any home-made meat pie. Got it?’

  Edison nodded.

  The front door of the farmhouse was unlocked, and as they crossed the threshold the air felt colder, the white light of dawn in chilly splashes on the wallpaper. Checking the ground floor, they found nothing. The door to the boy’s room upstairs was open, as it had been on their first visit. The bed was empty. Brooke was wondering if they’d find a fresh grave out in the fields when they heard the distinct sound of a horse cantering, a joyful rhythm to the hooves.

  Brooke threw the sash window up as Jed Sneeth emerged from the woods on a bay horse, riding up the valley, urging it on, coaxing the last ounce of energy from its muscles before reining it in at the door of the barn.

  The boy was actually whistling by the time they reached the stall. With a brush in each hand, he worked strong, curved strokes over the sweating flanks.

  ‘We thought you were ill,’ said Brooke, holding the face mask to his chest.

  ‘No, I said I’m on the mend.’ He ran his hand through the mane, puzzled by the face masks. ‘What’s going on?’

  They didn’t answer.

  ‘This is Broomstick,’ said Sneeth. ‘My horse, for today anyway. Mum says we have to sell her, and everything else that’s not nailed down. We’re off back to Gainsborough – my uncle’s farm. There’ll be other horses, but I’ll miss her.’

  ‘The horsemeat your father butchered was contaminated,’ said Brooke. ‘It’s lethal, Jed. We thought it was killing you …’

  The boy shook his head, dropping the brush. ‘Dad called it cheval, but that doesn’t change what it is. I couldn’t …’

  ‘We can’t find your mother,’ said Edison.

  ‘She’s been staying with her sister in Newmarket; she’ll be back by noon. She didn’t eat it either.’

  ‘Is there any left?’ asked Brooke.

  He took them into the kitchen and opened the pantry door. Brooke found the meat under a muslin cloth, a broad cut of exceptionally lean flesh, the grain of it like best beef.

  ‘Dad loved it,’ he said. ‘That’s our perk, he said. None of the others got a cut, just us and Currie, the soldier. He was the organiser. Dad said that was a risk: dead meat, not slaughtered meat. Shouldn’t really touch it. But he had a taste for it. Currie said the horses died trying out a drug, a medicine, and that the meat was fine. Fit for consumption. I didn’t like him, but he always bought a few bottles of beer for Dad.

  ‘We ate the rest, alright. A cut of pork, mutton, a pheasant. Dad said it was like the Ark, only backwards. Half for us, half for Currie, and that included the horsemeat.

  ‘He didn’t eat it either. He said he had a special customer up at Madingley Hall, and they paid well – top rate.’

  CHAPTER SEVENTY

  Brooke passed the doctor on the stairs down to the cells. A former GP, called out of retirement for the Duration, he took the stone steps carefully, a metal pail in one hand, a cloth draped over the top to conceal the contents, but Brooke could smell blood, and something sour which made his stomach lurch.

  ‘He’s given up,’ said the doctor: ‘Otherwise we’d have a better chance. Comfort’s recommended a serum, but he won’t have it. If he was healthy, and he wanted to recover … As it is. He can’t stop here. Addenbrooke’s can’t take him. There’s an isolation hospital at Ely, that’s favourite, but the paperwork’s to be done. I’ll get to it … For now, don’t touch him. Don’t go near. Got that, Inspector?’

  Brooke nodded, standing back to let the doctor pass.

  The cell door was open. Swift-Lane lay propped up on a bolster on the bunk, his shirt open. Any visible skin was bathed in sweat, and his eyes seemed to have burrowed back into his skull.

  His neck was badly swollen, and at one corner of his mouth his lips were disfigured by a small ulcer.

  ‘Inspector. I think this is what the classicists would call nemesis …’

  He dabbed at his mouth with a cloth stained with blood and mucus.

  ‘You should let them try the serum,’ said Brooke, taking a chair and placing his hat on his knee.

  ‘Why? So that I can be fit enough to stand trial? Or worse, fit enough for some godforsaken cell in some forgotten jail. Christ, I’d rather be dead. And that’s wishful thinking, Brooke …’

  ‘I presume Currie played supplier when it came to the meat?’

  The colonel nodded, then fought a series of wracking coughs.

  Recovered, he took a few moments to fill his lungs with air. ‘Useful man to have around, Currie. Spares for the car, cigarettes and, yes, the odd lean cut of meat. The steak was exceptional. He said he’d got a supplier in Suffolk. I believed him.’

  He shook his head and winced with pain.

  ‘I used to eat up in my attic room, bottle of claret, just like the old days. Kitchens didn’t mind, how long does it take? A minute either side. Rare, always bloody. Fatal, Brooke. The doc said they’d check the kitchen staff but there’s been no reports of illness. I’d never forgive myself …’

  Brooke almost laughed at that: the idea that in this whole affair, the inadvertent infection of the cook might be his only real crime.

  Swift-Lane folded up then, as if he’d taken a blow to the stomach. Brooke actually heard the gut in spasm.

  As he swept the sweat off his brow, his fingers shook violently.

  He gestured to a pile of documents on the floor.

  ‘A letter: to whom it may concern. There’s a file at Madingley, in my room. A will; everything goes to Frederick. I’ve no one else.’

  ‘Vera?’

  ‘She sent a note. Frederick will decide on his own future. She’s taken up the rent on Ida’s flat. A retirement of sorts … Admin up at Madingley are looking for secretaries, and I’ve put in a word. If not, the widow’s pension will have to be enough, because she won’t take my money, but it will fall to Frederick come what may …’

  In the silence they heard a bus rumble by overhead on Regent Street.

  ‘My life’s been a failure, Brooke. It’s maudlin, I know, because the past is just that: past. There’ll be a fine funeral, of course; my brothers will see to all the details …’

  He stopped for a full minute, regulating the rise and fall of his chest.

  ‘At least there won’t be a scandal,’ he said at last. ‘I know how these things work, Brooke. The sooner I’m nicely buried the better for everyone. By the time the church is empty, I’ll be forgotten. Anonymity is mine. The irony is brutal. I spent my whole life trying to make a mark.’

  Brooke heard footsteps on the stairs, and voices, negotiating the strategy for getting a stretcher down the spiral stone descent.

  Fear brought a light back to the colonel’s eyes. ‘I’d like it noted that I did prevent a disastrous failure in intelligence. That must never be forgotten. Henderson could have used the radio. It could have got to Moscow. I want that on the record.’

  Brooke felt he couldn’t let him have the last, self-serving word. ‘Marcus Ashmore, was he a final recruit?’ he asked, standing.

  ‘Marcus? He’ll serve his country well, Brooke. There’ll be no medals, but we can’t choose our war, that’s the lesson I’ve learnt.’

  ‘But Ernst Lux?’

  ‘The American? It was the Great Darkness, Brooke. Some things it will hide for ever.’

  CHAPTER SEVENTY-ONE

  A white world stretched beyond Cambridge’s northern limits, where snow-covered fen stretched towards a crisp, frosty horizon. Station DA, a series of three huts in a damp fen field, lay surrounded by
a double line of barbed wire, from which icicles dripped in the cold sunlight. An army guard, stamping boots on frozen peat, gave Brooke’s pass a desultory check and directed him to park on a stretch of old concrete runway where a line of motorcycles were accruing snow on leather saddles.

  The ruins of an abbey stood on a slight rise of ground. Brooke’s historical grip on the ‘fen islands’ was shaky, but he seemed to recall a link with the Knights Templar, and that the estate had been granted to the order in lieu of a debt. It still radiated the sad depleted energy of a lost time. Beyond the old wall, several swans sat in a field of peat, their necks held high like question marks. Overhead, a V-shaped flock of geese flew north towards the sea.

  Marcus Ashmore was waiting for him in the car park allocated for visitors, each bay outlined by whitewashed bricks set on the concrete.

  ‘Brooke,’ he said. ‘My office?’

  He pointed to one of the huts. The boy had changed, thought Brooke as they walked in silence. A month ago, when they’d met at the house, he’d been a shy, introverted version of his childhood self. Now, striding towards the huts, he radiated a proprietorial confidence, as if he’d finally found a place to be himself.

  The hut contained trestle tables covered in papers, at which worked about twenty men and a solitary woman, although she had assumed what appeared to be an informal uniform of tweed jacket and white shirt, with tie. Pipe smoke clogged the air, while a mean gas fire emitted a glow of amber warmth.

  Brooke noted what had become the leitmotif of the phoney war: the aroma of stewed tea.

  All heads turned to examine the new arrival.

  ‘This is Detective Inspector Brooke,’ said Marcus. ‘His security clearance is A-plus.’

  Brooke raised his hat.

  One of the men, in a suit – but daringly tieless – coughed, and this seemed to be a signal for them all to return to their work.

  As they walked towards Marcus’s office, a half-glazed box, Brooke glanced at some of the paper scraps on the tables; numbers, in box-like paragraphs, dominated the scripts. And there were newspapers, several of which had German titles, although he caught sight of one in the Cyrillic Russian script.

  ‘I can’t tell you what all this is about, Brooke. It’s actually pretty tedious, and not at all dramatic. But it’s the start of something; a seed, if you like.’

  ‘A spore?’ asked Brooke.

  Marcus shut the door.

  ‘I’ve been instructed to be as helpful as I can,’ said Marcus, ignoring the question. ‘There is no question of prosecution. I take it that’s your understanding too?’

  Brooke nodded. ‘I didn’t know military intelligence had an interest in undergraduate high-fliers while they were actually still at university,’ he said.

  Ashmore laughed, his eyes focusing on some secret mid-distance, where the landscape was only revealed to men of his calibre and intellect.

  ‘I admit that there has been enthusiastic interest in recruitment at the university,’ he said. ‘I think, as a cadre – if I can call us that – we will make a difference to the service, to the country. I was approached; I was honoured to accept. That’s all I can say.’

  ‘Swift-Lane,’ said Brooke.

  ‘Indeed. He has contacts at the college. Are there any more details of his fate?’

  Brooke shrugged. ‘He died in Ely. Anthrax, the gastrointestinal strain. He was alone. Not a man to court friendship. The boy visited, Frederick, so that must have been some consolation.’

  ‘What a mess,’ said Ashmore, neatly consigning the events to the category of history’s forgotten disasters.

  On the wall behind his desk was a planner for the months of 1939, 1940, 1941, 1942. The idea that there were years of this weary, bureaucratic dullness made Brooke feel suddenly old.

  ‘Was it strictly necessary to kill Ernst Lux?’ he asked. The act of accusation was important. Just posing the question made him feel better than he had for a month.

  Ashmore steepled his fingers. But his eyes betrayed him, flitting to the escape route offered by the office door.

  ‘His girlfriend said you and he were close. Did you get close? An American on research work, he must have alerted your intelligence antennae. Did he mention his father, a hero of pacifism, locked up for his principles? If we take all that and set it against what he saw in the Galen that night, the film that I too have now seen, we can see his dilemma.

  ‘Obscene, isn’t it, the idea that biology, the science of life, can be harnessed for death? A single forty-pounder dropped on the Ruhr would result in, what, a thousand dead? Twenty thousand? A fifty-bomber raid, a hundred thousand dead?’

  Ashmore glanced at the clock.

  ‘Ernst was an intelligent man,’ said Ashmore. ‘He wanted to continue his research. There was a price. The war demands …’

  ‘But what did he say, Marcus? What did he plan to do? Denounce the work publicly? Another Swift-Lane slip there, letting an American citizen see the film. Not much point in getting him to sign the Official Secrets Act, was there? He could have said what he liked once he stepped off the boat in New York. Or, maybe not a public denunciation. What if he’d gone to Washington? In fact, it’s a bloody good question, Marcus. Do our allies know?’

  ‘The Germans don’t know, that’s the point, Brooke,’ he said, clearly tiring of the polite tone of the conversation. ‘Meanwhile, the Nazis are developing their own weapons. I’ve seen the aerial photographs, and we have people on the ground.’

  Brooke noted the we.

  ‘There’s a village on the Luneberg Heath where they’ve made a nerve gas called tabun. It’s the same facility which produced mustard gas in the last lot. You think they won’t use it? Where’s Luke? Jo said France, so he’ll be close to the front line.’

  ‘I’m a simple policeman,’ said Brooke. ‘I’m concerned with the death of Ernst Lux. I’ve examined the scene and he most certainly didn’t lose his grip on the narrow, decorated stone ledge. When did you decide that it might be opportune if he fell? When the siren sounded? When he told you what he planned to do? Or when you realised you’d played your own part in the security breach? He’d promised his fiancée that he’d never climb again. Did you persuade him to go out that night on the rooftops? A last climb, perhaps, before booking the boat home.’

  Ashmore stood up, both his hands manipulating a pencil.

  ‘You’ll never know,’ he said.

  It was the closest he was ever likely to come to a confession. Brooke wondered if he might be haunted by the falling image of Ernst Lux’s upturned face, and the last expression in his eyes. Betrayal, or simply surprise?

  ‘Your rise has been meteoric,’ said Brooke, surveying the workers at their tables as he was offered the door.

  ‘There are great problems to solve. Puzzles, Brooke, beyond the power of men. We’re going to need machines that think.’

  Brooke adjusted his hat. ‘We need men that think, Marcus. Remember that.’

  CHAPTER SEVENTY-TWO

  Brooke unlocked the Michaelhouse punt from its manacles on the wooden dock by Mill Pond. A slim pole, attached to a fitting in the prow, suspended a lantern over the slatted seat. Snow lingered on the banks, and Claire lay wrapped in a picnic blanket, as Brooke, standing in the stern, edged them expertly under the Bridge of Sighs, with one hand on the stonework overhead.

  ‘I nearly forgot them,’ said Brooke. ‘The three commies: Henderson, Lauder and Popper.’

  ‘And you’d promised to look out for them,’ said Claire.

  They couldn’t run to champagne, but Brooke had found a Chablis in the cellar. The icy night air had kept it crisp.

  ‘Yes. And we keep our promises, the Brookes. They’d moved them again – to Lincoln. I drove up with Edison and caused a fuss. The union man, Henderson, had suffered most. He was thin, and nervy; I doubt he’d have lasted too long. They had to fish him out of solitary. We got them in the back of the Wasp and took them home. If they report regularly to the station they can see the
war out as free men.’

  ‘So that explains the celebration?’

  ‘Yes. No one had bothered to unravel Swift-Lane’s orders. They could have stayed there for the duration. Now they’re free to agitate for worldwide communism. Although Henderson’s radio has been removed. No point in going too far …’

  Claire threw her head back to look at the sky.

  ‘That’s one thing you can say about the blackout. It’s given us back the stars,’ she said.

  ‘And that’s not all,’ said Brooke. ‘The colleges have been persuaded to set up their own fire-watch scheme, a warden for each, for all the hours of darkness. Doric has been placed in a position of giddy authority. The prospect of working days has been miraculously lifted.’

  A minute later they were opposite St John’s Wilderness, a skull-and-crossbones sign just visible in silhouette against the sky. A platoon of soldiers had uncovered the pits and found all of them empty, except the last. The decaying bodies of the horses, encased in lime, were burnt in the pit. All the meat in Sheffield had been destroyed. The West Bar team had made a series of arrests across Yorkshire. There was no evidence any of the meat had made it across a butcher’s counter. But, as Solly had predicted, the shadowy gang leaders had melted away.

  ‘One day,’ said Claire, ‘our grandchildren might play on that riverbank.’

  She raised her glass.

  ‘Read it again,’ said Brooke.

  The letter from Joy had come in the post that morning. A wedding was planned for February. A child was due in June.

  Claire read, catching expertly the note of suppressed excitement, emphasising the promise to come home for the birth.

  ‘Boy or girl, do you think?’ asked Brooke, edging down the punt to take a seat and a glass.

  ‘Don’t mind,’ said Claire, rearranging the picnic blanket.

  ‘Aldiss wants to run an experiment on me,’ said Brooke. ‘He thinks he might be able to make me sleep; apparently, I have much in common with his cockroaches and fireflies. I have circadian rhythms. They need establishing anew.’