Sassoon was reputed to have lured anybody who was anyone in fashionable society to his home. The newspapers listed politicians, princes, even the King of a small country. Their cars had swept up the long drive and on to the forecourt where a Union flag was picked out in pink-and-white stone rescued from the old Westminster Bridge. But Sassoon was an outsider. No one Lindsay knew personally had been on the guest list but he often wondered if all that blue blood had whispered, ‘Nice fellow but a little foreign.’ Sassoon had died in the summer before the war and the Combined Services Detailed Interrogation Centre – CSDIC – had taken his home. Now young Nazis lived under his roof and strolled under escort through his gardens.
It was a little after four o’clock when Lindsay made his way down the grand oak staircase into the entrance hall. A low shaft of sunlight was pouring through the west-facing window, its smoky brightness shifting and swirling about the guards at the security desk.
‘Lindsay, I’ve been looking for you.’
Lieutenant-Commander James Henderson was squeezing his broad frame through the half-closed porch door: ‘May I have a word.’ His voice bounced roughly about the elegant plaster ceiling and pillars: ‘Let’s walk.’
Lindsay followed him out of the hall and through the security fence on to the broad brick terrace at the east end of the house. They stopped by the gate to the swimming pool, once the heated height of luxury, empty now but for last autumn’s curling leaves.
‘I haven’t wished you a happy birthday,’ said Lindsay, offering Henderson his hand.
‘You’re coming tonight, aren’t you?’
‘Yes. Thank you.’
Henderson began to push at a loose piece of brick paving, edging it backwards and forwards with his shoe. He was an awkward-looking man, an inch or so shorter than Lindsay but broader and heavier, an East Anglian farmer even in his well-tailored blue uniform and an unlikely recruit to Naval Intelligence.
When he lifted his chin at last, there was a dark frown on his face and his lips were tightly pursed. There was clearly something difficult he wanted to say.
‘Cards down, Lindsay, Colonel Checkland is cross because you went behind his back to the Citadel. It wasn’t your place to speak to Winn about our codes.’
Lindsay almost smiled – Checkland was always cross with him. The Colonel was the head of Section 11 and had been for as long as anyone could remember. But Naval Intelligence was changing. Reserve officers twenty years his junior called the shots, clever amateurs with an academic contempt for rank and naval discipline – men like Rodger Winn and Ian Fleming. It was Ian Fleming who had found Lindsay his job as an interrogator and Checkland was certainly not going to forget that.
‘The Colonel wants you to drop it,’ said Henderson firmly. ‘It was just idle talk, gossip. The right people at the Admiralty have looked into it and they’re satisfied there is nothing to suggest any of our codes are compromised.’
‘Did they interrogate my prisoner, Zier, the wireless operator?’
‘Drop it. It’s nothing. You’ve been here four months, you’re good at your job but you’re wrong about this, and there are important security issues at stake here.’
‘Of course there are – the security of our codes,’ said Lindsay crossly.
‘I don’t mean that.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘It’s not important for you to know.’
Henderson paused to make eye contact and when he spoke his voice was cold:
‘Do you think you know better than everyone else? Don’t rub people up the wrong way. Look, we’ve taken a chance with you. Don’t give us reasons to doubt you. The Director of Naval Intelligence has instructed interrogators not to question prisoners about codes. This is not for you. Leave it alone. Oh, and that’s an order, an order from the Director.’
It was unambiguous, final, and it needled. Code and Cipher Security at the Admiralty had slammed the door shut without taking the trouble to interview Lindsay or Prisoner 530.
‘It’s a pity Colonel Checkland isn’t prepared to back the judgement of his interrogators,’ he said with a bitter shake of the head.
Henderson sighed pointedly. ‘If you want to take it up with him in person, be my guest, but I would hate to see you have to go.’
Lindsay knew that was a lie. There was no love lost between them. But what was the point of brow-beating the messenger when in three hours’ time he would be standing, glass in hand, at his party. Henderson must have read the resignation in his face. Touching his elbow, he began to propel him gently along the terrace in pursuit of the sunshine. A couple of well-dressed clerical assistants were perched on the stone balustrade at the far end, chatting animatedly beneath a vigorous lead statue of Hercules. He stopped well short of them and turned to face Lindsay. ‘You’re doing a good job, Douglas,’ he cooed. ‘Don’t spoil it. Look, I need to be away. I promised Uncle I would be at his house by seven.’ He hesitated, then said: ‘I can’t take you all the way – things to collect – but I’ll drop you at the station.’
The Alvis roared up to the front of the house. Lindsay stepped through the security fence and flung his coat and case in the back. It was a five-minute run from Trent Park to the station at Cockfosters but in a little under two miles they would pass from open countryside into the grimy bustle of the city. Sassoon’s great park was at the very outer edge of London: to the north, the woods and rolling hills of Hertfordshire, to the south, the steady creep of pebble-dashed suburbia. It was Hitler who had brought the city’s march to a halt at the gates of Trent Park.
‘Mary seems to have taken to you, old boy,’ Henderson roared over his engine. They were batting between the limes that led in a long avenue to the gates, the sun yellow and blinding already.
‘She’s a lovely girl. I’m a little afraid of her – a bit of a scholar – the first in our family. Not sure I approve really. She was offered a Fellowship at Oxford, you know, but turned it down to join the Division.’
‘I’ve only met her once,’ said Lindsay. ‘She wants to talk to me about the prisoners.’
‘If you say so,’ said Henderson sceptically. ‘She has some academic friends, of course, but she doesn’t invite them to parties. One of our neighbours in Suffolk took a shine to her but she frightened him away. Too bloody clever. I don’t suppose you’ll have that problem.’
The car scrunched to a halt between the puissant stone lions that flanked the gates to the Park, showering the guards with loose gravel. A cross-looking sergeant waved them on to the Cockfosters Road. Lindsay was struggling to think of something to say; for once, Henderson’s imagination was faster than his car: ‘She’s quite religious, you know. Much better than me, goes to church every Sunday. Are you religious?’
‘No.’
Pinstriped commuters brandishing copies of the Evening Standard were pouring out of the dull brick station. Heads turned as the car came roaring to a halt. Lindsay squeezed out of his seat and on to the pavement.
‘See you later, old boy,’ Henderson boomed.
Rattling through the gloom towards the city, Lindsay’s thoughts turned again to Prisoner 530. It was typical of the Navy. If you stepped out of your box into someone else’s you were jumped on. An interrogator with something to say about codes was trespassing and no one in the Admiralty was interested. Lindsay had listened to the disc they had cut and there was something in Oberfunkmaat Peter Zier’s voice, a quiet assurance, that suggested he knew what he was talking about. It had been more than just a throwaway remark. Zier had refused to answer any questions about codes but the truth was there in his eyes, in the movement of his body and the little catch in his voice. A good interrogator had a sixth sense for when a prisoner was trying to hide something – Checkland had taught him that much.
‘Excuse me. You shouldn’t be reading that.’
A full-looking middle-aged woman in a heavy purple coat was leaning across the carriage towards him, her turkey neck and face flushed with indignation. She was pointing at th
e magazine that lay open on his lap.
‘Did you hear me?’
Adolf Hitler was spread across the centre pages under the eighteen-point Gothic headline ‘Die Mannschaft der Scharnhorst begrüssen den Führer’. The crew of the battleship Scharnhorst was cheering for dear life and the crooked cross flew proudly from the quarterdeck.
‘That sort of thing is upsetting.’ She was barking down the carriage now, demanding the attention of a dozen or so bored-looking passengers. Lindsay closed the magazine and reached for his briefcase.
‘I’m obliged to read this.’
The woman twittered something about being more ‘sensitive’ but his thoughts were drifting away. He had rather sheepishly looked up the Henderson family in Debrett: traditional squirearchy with roots in the fifteenth century, a coat of arms and a short address in Suffolk. At the bottom of a half-page entry, Mary Victoria Hobhouse Henderson, born 1916, and a brother called James, born 1911. He tried to conjure a picture of Mary in his mind, her thick black loose-curled hair, the broad smile that scrunched and wrinkled her face, her sandy-green eyes. She had been sitting behind her desk in a ghastly tweed suit but she was tall, perhaps five foot seven, and appeared to have a good figure.
‘Are you listening to me?’
The large purple woman was still blustering.
8
Lord North Street
Westminster
T
ing. The ormolu clock on the mantelpiece at Mary’s shoulder struck half past eight. The little panelled drawing room was thick with smoke and noise, a press of navy blue and bright evening silk. She could see her Uncle David’s grey head bobbing towards the door, slipping from one outstretched hand to the next with all the effortless charm of the experienced politician. James Henderson had invited an odd assortment of naval officers, his club cronies and family friends from Suffolk. Mary recognised a good number of the men, but only one of the women. Her cousin Gillian was holding court in a corner of the room, shimmering seductively in a silver dress. She was some way through an anecdote that seemed neither interesting nor funny but her audience of junior officers was smiling devotedly none the less.
Mary was capable of party conversation too but it was sometimes a trial. A little charm, a little make-up, a dark green evening dress, and conversation never seemed to rise above the commonplace. Dr Henderson became just one of the girls. The more trouble she took with her appearance, the less she seemed to enjoy an evening. But she had made an effort for James’s party.
It had been forward of her to ask Lindsay to the party, uncharacteristically so, and she flushed with embarrassment as she remembered the look of surprise on his face. But things moved quicker in war, they had to, and she had sensed that Lindsay was intriguingly different, a little intense but clever and funny.
‘Your glass is empty, Miss Henderson, may I?’
A blotchy, thin-faced sub-lieutenant with a drunken stoop was brandishing a bottle at her.
‘Just a little.’
He swayed forward and the neck of the bottle clinked sharply against Mary’s glass.
‘Forgive me. Bill Perkins. I’m with Commander Henderson at Cockfosters,’ he bellowed above the party noise. Mary could smell cigarettes and her uncle’s good Bordeaux on his breath.
‘Wonderful party.’ Perkins lifted his glass. ‘Wonderful.’
She glanced impatiently at the open door and the dark hall beyond. Her uncle’s housekeeper, Mrs Leigh, was taking a coat from someone in the shadows at the bottom of the stairs.
Perkins was fumbling in his jacket pocket: ‘May I show you this? It’s from The Times or perhaps the Telegraph.’ There was something in the way Perkins unfolded the newspaper cutting that suggested it was a trusted substitute for conversation when imagination failed or drink rendered him incapable.
‘Spare Dr Henderson, please.’
Lindsay was hovering at her shoulder with the dry smile she remembered so well from their first meeting. He looked younger out of uniform, handsome in charcoal grey, perhaps a little more Germanic.
‘Oh it’s you,’ said Perkins coolly.
‘Yes, me. Look, Commander Henderson asked me to find you. He’d like a word.’
‘With me?’ Perkins was surprised and pleased. He paused to empty the last of a bottle into his glass, then, without excusing himself, began to weave unsteadily across the room.
‘Did my brother really want to talk to him?’
‘No.’
‘That was cruel.’
‘I think your brother will cope, don’t you?’
Mary tried to stop herself smiling. ‘James doesn’t like you very much.’
‘Really?’ Lindsay’s voice and casual smile suggested that he cared not a fig.
‘Let’s see: “standoffish”,“arrogant”,“foreign”.’
‘How nice to feel welcome.’
‘I’m sorry. I am direct. Don’t you like people to be direct?’
‘Wasn’t that one of the words James used to describe me?’ Lindsay reached over to the mantelpiece for a bottle Perkins had missed and poured a little red wine into both their glasses: ‘“standoffish”,“arrogant”, you must judge for yourself. “Foreign”?’ His head dropped a little wearily: ‘You shouldn’t be fooled by the west of Scotland in my voice, Dr Henderson. My mother tongue is German.’
‘Yes. I know. Winn mentioned it.’ She lifted the glass of wine to her lips for a moment but lowered it without drinking. ‘Please don’t call me Dr Henderson.’
Lindsay smiled and raised his glass in salute. ‘I’m surprised your brother didn’t tell you himself, he’s very interested in my family.’
‘Why don’t you tell me?’
Lindsay placed his glass on the mantelpiece and reached inside his jacket for a calfskin wallet. From it, he took a small brown photograph, roughly torn at the edges, and handed it to Mary: ‘Mother. The year my parents met.’
She was wearing a simple dress, hands resting demurely on the top of a high-backed chair. Younger than Mary, perhaps twenty, shorter too, with a pretty, round face and the same thick brown hair swept back into heavy curls. Her eyes were dark and round, and a little sad.
Lindsay’s parents had met just before the last war. His father had visited Bremen to order something small but important for the family’s engineering works. He met and fell in love with Edith Clausen. After a very Low Church wedding, the couple bought a large villa in the west end of Glasgow. A short time later Douglas Alexander Clausen Lindsay was born and then his brother Eric.
‘We spoke German at home. Mother went to church twice on Sunday. We were at school in Scotland at first, then, after some unpleasantness, I finished my education in Germany. That brought me very close to my family there.’
‘Unpleasantness?’
Lindsay hesitated. ‘I was a little too German when I was small. Some boys wanted to fight the Great War again in the playground – some teachers too.’
After leaving school, he had spent a year with his grandfather’s company in Bremen trying to learn something about marine boilers and business. Then he went up to Cambridge to study history: ‘Where I was Secretary of the Anglo-German Society.’
Mary laughed her short, breathless, rippling laugh: ‘Clausen Lindsay, it has a certain ring.’
‘So does Hobhouse Henderson.’
She raised an eyebrow archly: ‘You’ve done some homework.’
‘What else would you expect from an interrogator?’
‘Do you still have close family in Germany?’
He did not answer but stared at her intently until she flushed a little and looked down: ‘Sorry, a question too many.’
The hard core of the party was moving on to whisky and pink gin, the faint-hearted had begun to drift away. Perkins was now snoozing on an elegant but uncomfortably upright eighteenth-century settee. A gramophone had been spirited up from somewhere and James Henderson was bent over a pile of discs. Lindsay took a conspiratorial half step towards Mary.
‘The Navy likes to keep officers with German connections away from intelligence, I expect you know that,’ he said. ‘They took a risk with me – I’m the only one with close family in . . .’ he smiled his dry, tight-lipped smile, ‘in the Fatherland.’
‘You’re a Scot and you’ve been decorated. Why should the Navy care?’
Only half in jest, Lindsay glanced at the people around them to be sure no one was listening: ‘Security could have been more thorough.’
Without thinking, Mary placed her hand lightly on his sleeve: ‘Tell me. I love secrets.’
‘I have a cousin called Martin, Martin Schultze. And . . .’ he paused for dramatic effect, ‘he commands a U-boat. A successful one. I’m sure there’s a file on his submarine in the Citadel.’
The gramophone began to crackle to the sound of Joe Crossman: ‘I’ll be glad when you’re dead you rascal, you . . .’ James Henderson was beaming at the room. Lindsay was laughing too.
‘What’s funny?’
‘Your expression.’
His gaze followed the quiet sweep of the hand she lifted to her face in one graceful movement.
‘Do you know about my ship?’ he asked.
The Interrogator Page 5