by Roland Moore
“Thanks, Doc.”
Channing clipped his medical bag shut, slipped on his greatcoat and trilby hat and went to leave. But he paused at the door and turned to Harry. “I’d just say one thing.”
“What?”
“That the attack seems unusual. We haven’t had any terrorist activity since the bomb that derailed the train on the way from Brinford. So this lot might be novices. They might make a mistake.”
“Thank you, Doctor,” Harry said. “I’ll bear that in mind.”
Channing tipped his hat and left the medical room. Harry pondered the details of what had happened. Maybe he should increase the number of patrols his men did of the local area? Maybe they should hunt these men down? The trouble was that Joe hadn’t seen their faces. He just described three men of average height, dressed in balaclavas. Harry thought about what Channing had said. He wondered if they were novices. These people might make a mistake. But it worried him that two boxes of US munitions were out there somewhere, and that they were potentially in enemy hands.
Where was Evelyn?
That was the question that filled Iris’s thoughts as she marched from Shallow Brook Farm to Helmstead, the skies starting to darken overhead. She knew that Evelyn would be working and that her job involved being a courier. Esther had commented once that Evelyn would drive around, sometimes taking parcels, sometimes people, from place to place. Employed by the War Office, she had a petrol ration for her work. But Iris needed to know her schedule. She needed to know where to find her. Iris knew she would be in even more trouble for marching off from work, but she hoped that Shelley would cover for her, at least for an hour or so. And anyway, what did she really have to lose?
Near the vicarage, Reverend Henry Jameson was talking to a gaggle of old women. They were fawning over the young man, hanging on his every word as if he was Gary Cooper. She recognised Mrs Gulliver in the group, but not the others. Iris moved towards them and could hear Henry quoting something from the Bible. She decided that she didn’t have time to worry about being polite. Time was against her. She had to prove to Finch and Esther what was going on before tomorrow afternoon. Before she got sent away.
“Excuse me, Reverend?” Iris piped up.
The coterie of old woman turned their heads as one to see who this interloper was. Several of them poked their noses up into the air, perhaps worried that Iris would snatch Henry’s attention away from them.
“I need to find Evelyn Gray,” Iris said. “Would you know where she is?”
“I’m sorry, Iris, no.” The reverend shook his head.
Iris was about to walk away when a voice stopped her. It was Mrs Gulliver. “Well, I know where she will be.”
“Really?”
“I knows her schedule, see.”
The other old women looked impressed with this bit of news. Henry shrugged in a well-there-you-go kind of way. Mrs Gulliver knew so much about the comings and goings in the town. She really was like the local oracle.
Something about what Mrs Gulliver had just said was troubling, but Iris didn’t have time to make the connection. Feeling exhausted and stressed meant that she wasn’t thinking straight. Wasn’t seeing the thing that was in plain sight.
“Yesterday she did runs from different villages around the area. Today she usually does runs between Brinford and Helmstead. But sometimes she mixes the routes and the timings so that no one can predict where she’ll be exactly.”
“So where is she today?” Iris insisted.
“Why do you want her?”
Iris should have known that she’d have to trade information to get anything back from Mrs Gulliver. Her mother had always told her to tell the truth. But Mrs Gulliver would probably explode if Iris started babbling about photographs and notes and being attacked by Evelyn, so she decided to lie. “Finch has a message for her.”
“What’s the message?” Mrs Gulliver asked, with no hint of embarrassment.
“It’s rather personal,” Iris said, wondering how long this stand-off would last and who would break first. Luckily help was on hand and stacked in her favour.
“With all due respect, I don’t think the contents of the message is our concern, Mrs Gulliver,” Henry interjected. Mrs Gulliver pulled a face. Iris assumed she thought it was a matter of opinion and in the public interest to know, but Mrs Gulliver backed down. Henry’s words carried some sway.
Iris was wondering how Mrs Gulliver had got so close to Evelyn as to know some of her schedule. Then the answer hit her, almost taking her breath away. If you wanted to learn about Finch or anyone else in the town, who better to befriend than the town busybody? But of course, to learn from such a person, you would have to trade some information, as Iris had just discovered. So Evelyn must have used Mrs Gulliver to find out all the information she needed, cosying up to her by pretending to be her friend.
Mrs Gulliver accepted Henry’s comment, but still milked the moment before revealing what Evelyn was doing. Iris guessed she saw it as privileged information that stood Mrs Gulliver head and shoulders above the other gossips in Helmstead, so she was going to play to the gallery. When she was sure that all the old women in the group were hanging on her next words, Mrs Gulliver decided to speak.
“All right,” she said. “In about ten minutes, she will be picking up some parts for a printing press from the office of The Helmstead Herald and delivering them to -”
But Iris was already running off. She raced across the town square and past the Bottle and Glass. In the distance she could see a small car parked by the bridge where the newspaper office was. A woman dressed in an expensive dark-blue coat and hat was peeling off her driving gloves and making her way into the building. It was Evelyn. Iris ran over and crouched down on the other side of the car so that she couldn’t be seen. In the newspaper office, Evelyn was talking to the rotund figure of Roger Curran, Editor in Chief, photographer and the only reporter on the local newspaper. It was his job to cover everything that was newsworthy in the town of Helmstead and the surrounding areas. Iris watched as he packaged up a round cylinder into some sheets of newspaper. She guessed that the cylinder was a part of the printing press. She wondered how best to confront Evelyn. She wanted her to give her the note that had told John and Martin to go to the North Field. Iris didn’t have any real idea how she was going to make that happen. But she knew her chances of convincing Evelyn were even slimmer when Evelyn had the easy means of escaping in a car. Inside the office, Roger Curran packaged up a few more items and smiled at Evelyn Gray. Then with three metal cylinders and some cogs safely wrapped in newspaper, Evelyn put them in her wicker basket, bid him good day and left the shop.
Evelyn got into the Riley Nine and placed the basket on the passenger seat. She unclipped some reading spectacles and checked where she had to go. Satisfied, she put them away and started the engine. As Evelyn went to put the car into gear, Iris reached from the back seat, where she’d been hiding, and clamped her hand over Evelyn’s. Evelyn gasped, but didn’t scream. She turned slowly to see Iris crouched in the foot well of the back seat.
“Just drive off, normally,” Iris whispered. Evelyn wasn’t going to be intimidated. She gave a wry smile, as if to say she was merely indulging the whims of this foolish girl and drove off over the bridge. Iris shifted uncomfortably in the foot well of Evelyn’s car. The seats were cream-coloured leather and the steering wheel was unusually large. The vehicle smelled of damp and mould, as if it had been stored in a wet garage for some years. When they had driven out of sight of the newspaper offices, Evelyn glanced round.
“Are you kidnapping me?”
“Drive around the corner and stop.”
“Very dramatic. If you insist,” Evelyn replied. She drove another twenty yards and pulled over. Iris glanced over her shoulder. She could see the edge of the small parade of shops in which the newspaper office sat, but there were no windows from this side, so they couldn’t be seen. And the angle of the road meant that they were probably out of range of the eag
le eyes of Mrs Gulliver and the gossips by the church too.
Iris plucked the keys out of the ignition, opened the door and ran round to the passenger side of the car. She squeezed in alongside Evelyn, putting the basket on the back seat. She turned to face Evelyn, giving her the keys back.
Evelyn calmly started the car.
“Why are you here? I thought you should be in East Anglia by now.”
“I’ve got until tomorrow. But you’re going to come clean and tell everyone you were in Shallow Brook Farm and that you hit me and that you’re up to something!”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Evelyn smiled coldly.
“I thought you were just after Finch’s money. But it’s something else, isn’t it? Something to do with Vernon.”
“Is it really?”
“You latched onto Finch so he could get you close to Shallow Brook Farm. You befriended Mrs Gulliver so you could learn all about him and the farm, didn’t you?”
“You really do have the most overactive imagination.”
“You set all this up, didn’t you?”
“I met Fred by accident, don’t be silly. We met at Lady Hoxley’s Agricultural Show. Fred was wrestling with a large pig.”
Iris struggled to process these facts. She knew that that was what had happened. But if it was a coincidental meeting, how could it have been planned?
Then, Iris started to see clearly what had been nudging at her mind when she had been talking to Mrs Gulliver. The old woman had known Evelyn’s schedule; she was a sort-of-friend of Evelyn. Yes, but she’d worked that out already. Think, Iris! There was something else. The friendship. When did it start? Yes, that was it! Of course!
The friendship had started on the night of that dance in aid of the Spitfire Fund, weeks ago! The dance where the fight between the GIs broke out and Iris had first met Joe Batch.
Chattanooga Choo Choo had been playing.
And Evelyn had made a beeline for Frederick Finch, who was holding two pints. She had pulled herself up to her full height and plumped her hair. Iris had seen her move across the dance floor. But when she was a mere foot away from Finch, the fight broke out and the moment was lost. Evelyn had turned away and walked off.
“You didn’t meet by accident,” Iris insisted. “You planned to meet him at the dance a couple of weeks before, but it didn’t happen. So later, when you saw him at the Agricultural Show, you already knew who he was from Mrs Gulliver. So then it seemed like a coincidence.”
“Impressive theory.” Evelyn bristled and Iris wondered if she’d hit the nail on the head.
“It’s right, though, isn’t it?”
“Yes, it is.” Evelyn stated flatly. “Happy now?”
Happiness wasn’t the first emotion that came to Iris’s mind. Instead she felt a cold tingle of fear playing on the back of her neck. Her mother said that this was what it felt like when someone walked over your grave. She had never really appreciated what it felt like until now.
“Look, I don’t know what your plan is. You used Finch to get close to Shallow Brook Farm, so you could get those papers and the photograph from the tin under the bed.”
“Yes. Go on. And what then?”
“But why?”
“I’m not going to tell you.” Evelyn laughed. “A clever girl like you should be able to work it out. And I think if you had more time you probably would. So it’s such a shame you won’t be here after tomorrow, isn’t it?”
That was true. She was getting nowhere fast, so Iris decided that it was time to talk bluntly. There was only really one thing Iris was interested in.
“I want that note. The one you wrote to John and Martin. You’ve got what you came for, haven’t you?”
“The tin of old documents and letters?” Evelyn snorted. “I suppose I have.”
“Just give me the note and I don’t have to go away. Then we’d both have what we want.”
“So I go off and you live happily ever after? Well, it’s a nice idea but it rarely works in practice.” Evelyn looked troubled, but Iris had no idea what she was thinking. “If I gave you the note, I’d incriminate myself, wouldn’t I? And why would I do that?”
“Because you’ve got the tin, you’ve got what you came for. Let me have the note, so then I can stay in Helmstead. Please.”
Iris looked with pleading eyes. Suddenly her bravado had vanished and she was a nervous, awkward 17-year-old again. A young woman scared of being sent away. Evelyn exhaled heavily, looking straight ahead. Her breath steamed up the windscreen. Then, she turned to Iris. “If I give you the note, it’ll break Fred’s heart because he’ll know what you said was true. And yet, as you say, I got what I came for, so there’s little need to maintain the charade. However, I really need to have easy access to Shallow Brook Farm for a bit longer, so I’m loath to burn all my bridges. Sorry.”
A thought burst into Iris’s head. Why would Evelyn still need easy access to the farm? She’d got the tin. She’d got what she came for, hadn’t she? No, it was because she didn’t have everything that she had come for. The map! The map had been left behind.
“You need the map,” Iris stated.
“You’ve got that?” Evelyn seemed visibly relieved. “I wondered …”
“I’ll give it to you, if you give me the note.”
There it was - an easy and straightforward deal to give them both what they wanted.
For the first time, Evelyn’s composure faded and she looked angrily at the young woman next to her. Iris enjoyed this shift in the power dynamic between them. She had something to bargain with, something that Evelyn desperately wanted. The big question was whether Evelyn wanted the map as much as Iris wanted to stay in Helmstead. Evelyn mulled over this proposal. There was no easy answer and it took nearly a minute before she spoke again.
“Prove that you’ve got the map,” She said.
“No,” Iris replied. “Otherwise you’ll take it off me.”
Evelyn nodded slowly. “The thing is, I don’t really want to hurt Fred. Not yet. Not until I’m farther away. There are too many loose ends at the moment. And if I give you the note, then I’d have to move really fast.”
“But you’d have the map,” Iris countered, knowing that her offer was intriguing the older woman.
“Tempting,” Evelyn said, before smiling again. The cracks in her composure were covered up again by an icy veneer as she came up with an alternative proposal. “Here’s an idea. You give me the map, and I talk to Fred and get him to send you somewhere nearer. There is a farm some eight miles from here.”
Iris went to protest, but Evelyn continued, “I talk to Fred and say that I think you should just go away for a few weeks and then you can come back and resume your life on the farm. By the time you’re back, I’ll have gone. And perhaps that will be the happy ending.”
Now it was Iris’s turn to mull things over. She guessed that Evelyn would have that sort of sway over Finch. She could get him to do whatever he wanted. But this new deal made her uneasy. Irrespective of the fact that she felt she couldn’t trust Evelyn, Iris didn’t like the idea of not being able to prove her innocence. Yes, she may be shipped to a nearby farm for a few weeks, but everyone would still think she had imagined all the things with Evelyn. She couldn’t live with that hanging over her.
“No deal,” Iris said. She fumbled for the door handle as she added, “The note for the map. You’ve got until the end of the week, otherwise I’ll take it with me.” Iris got out of the car and walked back towards Helmstead. She was confident that Evelyn would cave in and accept the offer, half-hoping that Evelyn would call her back right now. But she didn’t.
Evelyn watched her go, gripping the steering wheel in frustration.
Later that evening as the sky darkened from grey to black, a smart black car pulled up on the other side of the lane where Joe had been found in his truck. Dr Richard Channing got out, pulled his trilby down tightly on his head and walked purposefully across to the verge. He gave a curso
ry glance at the deep tyre tracks in the grass and mud, and then moved to where the back of the truck would have been. He looked closely at the grassy area between the twin tyre furrows. He moved the grass with his fingers. It wasn’t worn down or trampled, at least not in the way he’d have expected if the truck had been emptied of its contents. With men jumping out of the back of the truck with heavy boxes, he thought he’d see scuff marks, churned earth, flattened grass. But it was pristine. Almost as if the attackers had emptied it without going over the grass.
“Walking on air,” Channing mused, with a smile. He wondered why the army investigators hadn’t spotted it. But then he guessed they would have been more interested in the damage to the truck and the search for the missing armaments.
He glanced around for any other clues, but returned his gaze to the grass between the tracks. No footprints, no crushed blades of grass.
“How could they have unloaded it?” Channing muttered to himself. He’d hoped that if he was right about them being amateurs, then maybe there might be signs of their haul, perhaps a discarded ammunition box or a dropped packet of rounds. Anything that he might be able to examine to get information on the perpetrators. But the untrampled grass was confusing things. Maybe they weren’t amateurs? Maybe they had lifting equipment that they kept on the road?
Channing shook his head. Any lifting equipment wouldn’t reach that far. And besides, it would attract attention in getting it here or in setting it up.
Aware that he couldn’t stay for too long without attracting attention himself, he walked to the hedgerow and peered over. There wasn’t any sign of the discarded boxes. He walked back towards his car, walking over the storm drain in the road, little realising that Joe Batch’s rucksack was hidden a few feet beneath with a stolen hand gun inside. Dr Channing got back into his car and looked at the patch of earth where the truck had been. He wasn’t going to solve this puzzle tonight. He put his car into gear and set off down the country lane, back towards Helmstead and Hoxley Manor.