Orders from Berlin

by Unknown

  She was nervous and her words came out in an incoherent rush. But it wouldn’t have made any difference if she’d talked slowly, enunciating every syllable, because Thorn wasn’t really listening, and by the time she’d finished speaking, he’d already pushed open the door of her flat and was going inside.

  ‘You need to tell me everything that’s happened,’ he said, talking to her over his shoulder. ‘And I want to be here when Bertram gets back, police or no police. I won’t have him hitting you again.’

  Ava followed him into the kitchen with her heart in her mouth. It wasn’t Bertram hitting her that she was worried about any more; it was Alec hitting Seaforth or being hit himself. She’d seen what had happened at the funeral, and she didn’t want a repeat of it in her own flat. But there was no sign of Seaforth. She guessed he was behind the door in the bedroom. That was the obvious hiding place. It made her feel strange to think of him in there, standing at the foot of her unmade bed – she felt nervous and excited and ashamed of being excited all at the same time.

  ‘Like I told you on the phone, Bertram hit me. That’s what happened,’ she said, sitting opposite Thorn at the kitchen table and making the information sound as matter-of-fact as possible. She was glad that Seaforth had thought to get rid of the whisky bottle.

  ‘Why did he hit you? There must have been a reason.’

  ‘We haven’t been getting on for some time, and everything came to a head …’

  ‘And so you called the police – because of his violence?’

  ‘No, not exactly,’ said Ava, unwilling to lie.

  ‘What do you mean, not exactly?’ Thorn demanded. ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘I found some evidence that may connect Bertram to my father’s murder.’

  ‘What evidence?’

  ‘A cuff link. It matches one that the police found outside my father’s flat, near where he was struggling …’

  ‘I see,’ said Thorn. Ava thought he sounded disappointed, although she could think of no reason why he should be. He and Bertram had never been friends. ‘Where did you find it?’ he asked.

  ‘In his bureau,’ she said, pointing over at Bertram’s desk in the living room. The drawers were still open and the papers that she’d pulled out were strewn all over the floor.

  ‘Were the drawers and the lid locked?’ he asked, going over to look at the bureau himself. He knelt down, examining the keyholes.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And yet you picked them open? I’m not sure you’re capable of something like that, Ava,’ he said suspiciously. ‘Whoever picked these locks knew what they were doing.’

  Ava looked away, not knowing what to say. Thorn watched her eyes stealing away to the door of the bedroom. He’d noticed how she’d kept glancing in that direction ever since he’d come in.

  ‘You had help, didn’t you,’ he said accusingly. ‘And whoever helped you is still here, hiding in your bedroom, if I’m not mistaken,’ he added, crossing quickly to the door and pulling it open.

  ‘Hello,’ said Seaforth as he walked out into the living room, smiling that same thin, cold smile that Ava remembered from her father’s funeral.

  Thorn’s face turned red with fury, and he clenched his fists.

  ‘Don’t, Alec,’ Ava said sharply, seeing what was about to happen. ‘It isn’t what you think.’

  ‘Well, what the hell is it, then?’ demanded Thorn, looking outraged. ‘He was in your bedroom, for God’s sake.’

  ‘I just stepped in there out of the way to avoid you making a scene like the one you’re making now,’ said Seaforth. ‘I know how angry you get when there’s something that upsets you, and so it seemed a good idea to take evasive action.’ He spoke quietly and reasonably, as if he were trying to take the heat out of the situation, yet Ava had the impression that he was in fact trying to do the opposite – mocking Thorn for his impotent temper tantrum and trying to provoke him into a violent outburst that would alienate her once and for all.

  And he seemed to be succeeding. Thorn took a step towards Seaforth, and Ava didn’t know what would have happened if he hadn’t been distracted by the clanging of bells and the sound of a car screeching to a halt outside the kitchen window. Ava went out into the hall and returned moments later, accompanied by Inspector Quaid and two uniformed policemen.

  Immediately Seaforth came forward and held out his hand. ‘Are you Inspector Quaid?’ he asked. And when Quaid nodded, he went on smoothly: ‘I’m Charles Seaforth. We’ve spoken on the phone. It’s a pleasure to meet you.’

  ‘And you too,’ said Quaid. Ava was struck by the unexpected warmth with which Quaid responded to Seaforth’s greeting and shook his hand, before turning to Thorn, who was watching angrily from the doorway to the living room. ‘And you, sir – who might you be?’ he asked.

  ‘Alec Thorn. And I’ve got a good reason for being here, unlike him,’ said Thorn, gesturing towards Seaforth. ‘Mrs Brive phoned and asked me to come because she was worried about her husband.’

  Quaid glanced over at Ava, who nodded her confirmation. ‘And are you the same Alec Thorn who visited Albert Morrison’s address on the day of his death—’

  ‘Yes,’ said Thorn, interrupting eagerly. ‘And then later that afternoon Albert came over to St James’s Park to see me at my office.’

  ‘At 59 Broadway?’ asked Quaid.

  ‘Yes, that’s right. You know because your assistant came and talked to me there. He was the one who told me about Albert’s visit. Anyway, I’d already gone home when Albert got there in his taxi, but the office was still open and if he’d got inside the building, there would be a record in the logbook. The man on the door is scrupulous about that. So the only explanation is that somebody intercepted him in the street outside and followed him home—’

  ‘How do you know that?’ asked Quaid, interrupting.

  ‘I don’t, but I’m sure it’s no coincidence that he came rushing over to St James’s Park and then got murdered the same night.’

  ‘I seem to have heard that somewhere before,’ said Quaid, not sounding as if it were a view he shared. ‘Who do you think followed him, Mr Thorn?’ he asked. ‘If you know something, you’re under a duty to tell me. You know that.’

  ‘I don’t want to name names, but maybe you should ask Mr Seaforth here what he’s doing in this flat and why he broke into that desk over there,’ said Thorn, pointing over at the bureau.

  ‘All right,’ said Quaid in a mock patient voice like that a schoolmaster might use to a misguided pupil. ‘Perhaps you can answer those questions for us, Mr Seaforth.’

  ‘Certainly,’ said Seaforth. ‘I’ve been worried about Mrs Brive since I met her at her father’s funeral because of what you told me on the phone, Inspector, about her husband. That’s why I’m here now. And then when I arrived, Mrs Brive asked me to help her look for evidence against her husband, so I unlocked his desk so that she could search it. She was the one who found the cuff link.’

  ‘Is that right, Mrs Brive?’asked Quaid, turning to Ava.

  ‘Yes, it was in the top drawer,’ she said.

  ‘Can I see it, please?’

  Ava handed the cuff link to Quaid, who took a small plastic packet containing the other cuff link from his pocket and then went over to the kitchen window to compare the two in the light. ‘They’re an exact match,’ he said, sounding pleased.

  Thorn had watched this procedure with growing impatience and now couldn’t stay quiet any longer. ‘Can’t you see what’s happening?’ he burst out. ‘Seaforth must have put it there when Ava wasn’t looking. He’s planted the damned thing.’

  ‘That’s absurd,’ said Seaforth, shaking his head. ‘Why would I do that?’

  ‘To frame Bertram, to make him take the blame for murdering Albert. I know what you did, Seaforth, and I’m going to make you pay for it. I swear I am!’ said Thorn, speaking through gritted teeth.

  ‘That’s enough,’ Quaid said sharply. ‘I won’t tolerate any more of this, Mr Thorn. Do you
hear me? Bertram Brive has got some important questions to answer, and I’m not going to allow you to compromise my investigation. Constable Relton here will escort you back to the railway station,’ he ordered, indicating the taller of the two constables he’d brought with him. ‘Mr Seaforth, you’re free to go. Thank you for your cooperation.’

  ‘Damn you,’ said Thorn, turning back as he followed the policeman out of the flat. ‘You haven’t heard the last of this, I promise you.’ It wasn’t clear whether he was talking to Quaid or Seaforth or both of them, but his final words were clearly addressed to Ava: ‘I thought better of you,’ he said. ‘It seems I was mistaken.’ He slammed the door behind him.

  Once Thorn was gone, Seaforth said goodbye to Ava in the hall outside.

  ‘Don’t worry about Thorn,’ he said. ‘He doesn’t know what he’s talking about.’

  ‘I don’t know what to think,’ said Ava, shaking her head.

  ‘Well, you surely can’t believe that nonsense he was saying about me in there,’ said Seaforth, looking outraged.

  ‘No. No, I don’t.’ She leant back against the wall behind her and closed her eyes. She looked as though she’d had enough.

  ‘Can I see you again?’ he asked, softening his voice. ‘I know you’re going through hell at the moment and I’d like to know you’re all right.’

  ‘I don’t know,’ she said. But looking over Seaforth’s shoulder out into the empty street, she felt she needed something to look forward to. She remembered what he’d said at the Corner House: ‘People need to feel alive. They have a right to it, I think, particularly in wartime.’ Her life was a war zone, imploding all around her. Surely to God she had the right not to stay buried in the rubble.

  ‘Just to talk, that’s all. It doesn’t have to mean anything,’ he said, leaning his head to one side, trying to catch her eye.

  ‘Everything means something,’ she said with a wan smile, meeting his look. He was so confident and self-possessed, which was what made him so attractive. Yet he was detached too, as if he were a cinema-goer, watching events unfold like films from behind his bright blue eyes. There was something opaque about them, she thought, as if they gave no clue to the man inside.

  She remembered how he’d seemed to enjoy provoking Thorn in the flat, as if he were a matador playing with a crazed bull, and she remembered the other things that Thorn had said about her father’s death. Coincidences happen, but it did seem strange that her father’s visit to St James’s Park should have had nothing to do with his murder, and in Bertram’s absence she felt a little less sure of her husband’s guilt. She didn’t believe it, but Seaforth could have put the cuff link in the desk drawer.

  And why had he shown up out of the blue and shown such an interest in her these last few days? That was the question she kept coming back to. Was it just concern for her well-being, as he had told the inspector, or was it something more? People did things for a reason, and she needed to find out what made Seaforth tick. And the only way to do that was to see him again; the fact that she found him attractive had nothing to do with it. There would be no risk if she was careful, and she might learn something.

  ‘Well?’ he asked. ‘Will you?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said simply. ‘Call me.’ And then she turned away and went back inside the flat to await her husband’s return.

  Seaforth crossed to the other side of the street, and after checking back to see that no one was watching from the window of Ava’s flat, he slipped into an overgrown, disused garden and took up position behind a thick ash tree that he had previously selected as an observation point. The windows of the house behind him were boarded up, and the garden had descended into rack and ruin since the owners’ departure. Brambles and vines choked the tree’s branches, providing a natural tent through which he quickly hollowed out a gap, giving him a perfect view of Ava’s building.

  An hour passed and then another, but he showed no signs of losing patience. Quaid’s big black police car sat empty by the kerb, with the morning sunlight glittering on its silver headlamps. Seaforth smiled as he pictured the scene inside the flat, with the two policemen going meticulously through Bertram’s desk, building a case against the ridiculous doctor for a crime he didn’t commit.

  Seaforth wasn’t proud of the murder, not because he regretted the taking of Albert Morrison’s life, but because he’d made such a mess of it. He’d done a better job of cleaning up afterwards, but that didn’t justify his earlier ineptitude.

  It had been a bad day. Not that that was any excuse. He’d been thrown off balance by the shock of hearing at the morning conference at HQ that the communications boffins had decoded Heydrich’s radio message to him about the assassination plan. And then he’d stayed later than usual at work, worrying about whether his own messages were secure – unnecessarily, as it turned out, as he’d used a different code to his spymaster in Berlin.

  It was pure luck that he ran into Albert as the ex-chief of MI6 came hurrying up Broadway that evening, and it didn’t take him long to put two and two together and realize that Thorn must have taken Albert the decoded message. Albert had been Thorn’s mentor, and if anyone was going to know the identity of the mysterious German C who’d signed the message, then it was going to be Albert. And it was pretty obvious from the old man’s excitement that he’d worked out the answer. C was Heydrich, and once that information got out, finding the Gestapo chief’s agent in England would become a national priority. Seaforth couldn’t let that happen.

  ‘I have to see Alec Thorn. It’s extremely important,’ Albert declared in the doorway of HQ, making it sound like an order, as if he were still in charge.

  ‘He’s been called away out of London for the night. He’ll be back tomorrow,’ Seaforth lied. ‘Is it something I can help you with?’

  ‘You? No, of course not. Just tell Alec I need to see him urgently. You can do that much, can’t you?’

  Seaforth nodded, amused by the old man’s rudeness. There was nothing more to say, so he walked away round the corner and watched Albert jumping anxiously from one foot to another at the bus stop, until he finally gave up and went into the Tube station, where Seaforth followed him down onto the westbound Circle Line platform. In retrospect, Seaforth realized that much the best solution would have been to push Albert under the train when it came in or, better still, to throw him in the river when he stopped on Chelsea Bridge on his way home and stood gazing down into the water, lost in some kind of old man’s daydream. That would have saved a lot of trouble, but Seaforth had wanted to find out what Albert knew, so he’d followed him back to Battersea and forced him up the stairs of his apartment building at gunpoint. It was against the law to carry a concealed weapon, but it was a law that Seaforth broke every day. He had no intention of being taken alive if Thorn and his friends ever caught up with him.

  ‘You! All the time it was you!’ Seaforth remembered how Albert had seemed more interested in his discovery of Seaforth’s treachery than frightened of what Seaforth was going to do to him. He was courageous – Seaforth would at least say that for the old fool.

  ‘Yes, me. Sorry to disappoint you. And now I’m going to need you to tell me everything you know about that radio message,’ Seaforth said politely as he released the safety catch on his gun.

  ‘What radio message?’

  ‘You know what I’m talking about. Thorn brought it here, didn’t he – earlier today, to ask your opinion about what it meant? Come on, there’s no point in denying it.’

  But Albert hadn’t tried to. He went quiet instead, refusing to answer any of Seaforth’s questions, watching mutely but intently while Seaforth threatened him with the gun and started to lose his temper, sweeping the papers off the desk onto the floor in angry frustration. And then suddenly, without warning, he made a run for it, dashing out through the door and slamming it shut behind him.

  He’d been surprisingly quick on his feet and had got as far as the outside landing before Seaforth caught up with him and started hurti
ng him properly, pulling his arm behind his back and pushing him up against the iron balustrade. But still he refused to talk, preferring to fight, until he finally went tumbling over the barrier and fell head over heels to his death with an unholy scream. He hit the ground right at the feet of his daughter, whom Seaforth could dimly see below, looking up at him out of the shadows at the foot of the staircase.

  It had been a mess, which could so easily have turned into a total disaster. But instead Seaforth’s luck had held. There hadn’t been enough light on the landing for Ava to get a good look at him, and two days later he just happened to be the ranking officer on duty at HQ when Quaid, the police inspector in charge of the murder case, rang up to ask about the dead man’s connection to 59 Broadway.

  ‘Do you know an Albert Morrison?’ the inspector asked after introducing himself. ‘He’s the subject of a murder inquiry I’m conducting.’

  ‘Yes, he used to work here,’ Seaforth admitted. He had no choice not to. ‘But he retired several years ago,’ he added quickly.

  ‘We’ve found out that he took a taxi from his flat in Battersea over to St James’s Park on the day of his death. It seems reasonable to assume he was coming to visit your office.’

  ‘I don’t know anything about that.’

  ‘Yes, my assistant, Detective Trave, was at your office yesterday and was told that there was no record of any visit. I’m just following up to see if you can shed any light on why Mr Morrison should have gone there. That’s all.’

  ‘I’m afraid not,’ Seaforth said. And that might have been the end of the conversation, except that there was something in the inspector’s tone that Seaforth had picked up on – a sense that Quaid was just going through the motions, almost as if he were looking for a way to cross 59 Broadway off his list of leads.

  ‘Can I speak to you confidentially?’ Seaforth asked, testing the waters.

  ‘Yes, of course.’

  ‘Thank you. Well, it may help you to know that this office is a top-secret department of the War Office, and I think that I can speak on behalf of the Minister when I say that we would appreciate anything you can do to keep us out of your inquiry, unless it’s absolutely necessary, of course. You obviously have experience in these matters, and I’m sure I can count on your discretion.’