Orders from Berlin

by Unknown

  He edged forward, keeping his back to the wall. Opposite, through the open door of Albert’s bedroom, he could see the made-up corner of the dead man’s bed. It looked as though Ava had not yet begun to dismantle the flat, unless she was the one inside the living room, going through her father’s possessions. Of course, Trave thought. That was the obvious explanation. And she would be frightened out of her wits, assuming she’d heard him come in, which seemed likely. He hadn’t made any particular effort to be quiet when he’d first entered the flat.

  ‘Police, this is the police. Who’s in there?’ he called out, but there was no answer, just the sound of the siren. So he tried again. ‘Is that you, Ava?’ he asked. ‘This is Detective Trave. You know me. There’s nothing to be frightened of.’

  But there was still no response, just a sound of rustling; of muffled, furtive movement on the other side of the door. And the smell of smoke. As far as Trave could remember, Ava didn’t smoke, but he couldn’t be sure. Perhaps he was wrong; perhaps she did.

  Trave’s heart was beating fast, and he knew that if he was going to open the door and face the unknown, he needed to do it now. Any further delay and he risked losing his nerve. He took hold of the brass handle of the door, and then in one rapid movement he pulled it open and rushed inside.

  Immediately he had to force himself to stop. Facing him across a carpet littered with books and papers was a middle-aged man. Trave recognized him straight away – it was the same man who had lied to him at 59 Broadway on the day after Albert’s death and had provoked the scene at the funeral. Alec Thorn. Trave remembered the downstairs neighbour, Mrs Graves, struggling to put her finger on the name when he’d talked to her on the night of the murder after everyone else had gone home.

  For a moment, he thought that Thorn would go for a gun. But he did nothing, just stood with his back to the blacked-out window, his eyes flicking between Trave and the open door behind Trave’s back. He looked taut – defiant and anxious and curious all at the same time. A half-smoked cigarette burned uselessly in an ashtray on the desk in the corner.

  ‘Why didn’t you say who you were when I asked?’ Trave demanded breathlessly. He realized with surprise that he was angry. Very angry, in fact. But that made sense, he realized. It had required a lot of nerve to burst unarmed through the door. He’d felt he was taking his life in his hands, and Thorn could have saved him the trouble.

  ‘I’m sorry. You didn’t give me any time,’ said Thorn, looking Trave steadily in the eye. Trave had that same sense he’d had at 59 Broadway that Thorn was assessing him, working out his next moves as they spoke.

  ‘Okay,’ he said, mollified by the apology. ‘So what are you doing here? Perhaps you wouldn’t mind telling me that.’

  ‘Saying goodbye to an old friend. Albert and I go back a long way,’ said Thorn, choosing his words carefully.

  ‘I’m afraid you’ll have to do better than that,’ Trave said severely. ‘You lied to me before about why you came here, and I don’t need you to do it again. I’m sure you know who the most likely candidate is for returning to the scene of a crime.’

  ‘A murderer, you mean,’ said Thorn with a thin smile. ‘I can assure you I’m not that. The old lady downstairs let me in an hour ago. Murderers don’t knock on doors, or at least not in my experience, and I’m here looking for clues, not trying to destroy them.’

  ‘Clues? Clues to what?’

  ‘To who killed Albert, of course. I don’t think it was Bertram, whatever the newspapers say, and I don’t think you do, either, or you wouldn’t be here.’

  ‘All right, who, then? If you know something I don’t, you’d better tell me. I think your old friend at least has the right to expect that out of you.’ Trave sensed that Thorn was trying to play him, turning his questions back on him so as to take control of the conversation, and he was determined not to let that happen.

  ‘Tell me,’ he repeated when Thorn didn’t answer. But still Thorn stayed silent. He looked troubled, as if he couldn’t make up his mind about what to do. Behind his knitted brows, years of training in the ways of silence and concealment were competing with his longing for a confidant – someone, anyone, who might share his view of what had happened. Eventually he went over to the desk and picked up the still smoking cigarette from the ashtray; he inhaled deeply, and as he blew out the smoke, he seemed to come to a decision.

  ‘I think Charles Seaforth killed Albert,’ he said gravely. ‘He works with me – for me, in theory, although that’s been a fiction for some time now.’

  ‘I know who he is,’ said Trave.

  ‘How?’ asked Thorn, looking surprised.

  ‘I’ve been following him around London, or trying to,’ Trave said with a wry smile. ‘But that’s another story. Finish what you were going to tell me.’

  ‘All right,’ said Thorn, eyeing Trave with renewed interest. ‘I believe he intercepted Albert outside the building where we work, the one where you came to visit me; gave him some excuse about everyone having gone home; and then followed him back here and pushed him over the banister out there because he knew too much.’

  ‘About what?’ asked Trave.

  ‘About a plot of some kind that’s being hatched in Germany—’

  ‘By someone called C?’ asked Trave, interrupting.

  ‘Yes. How do you know that?’ asked Thorn sharply, looking shocked. It wasn’t the question he’d been expecting.

  ‘It was in a note we found in Albert’s pocket. Here, read it if you like,’ said Trave, taking his wallet out from inside his jacket and extracting a folded-up piece of paper that he handed to Thorn. ‘Don’t worry – it’s not the original. It’s just a copy I made for my own use.’

  ‘Why didn’t you show this to me before – when you came to see me?’ asked Thorn, looking up.

  ‘Because you lied about why you came over here and about the note you left for Albert. How was I supposed to trust you after that?’ said Trave, sounding exasperated.

  ‘It was my duty to lie,’ said Thorn. ‘I didn’t feel I had a choice.’

  ‘Because you’re a spy,’ said Trave. ‘That’s right, isn’t it?’

  Thorn shrugged. ‘I’m sorry I didn’t tell you the truth. I wish I had now, but there’s no point crying about it,’ he said shortly, and then went back to studying the note Trave had given him. It was very short – ‘Provide detailed written report. What are the chances of success? C.’ – and on the line below, the name HAYRICK, transcribed by Trave in capital letters, followed by a question mark.

  There was something he was missing. Thorn kept reading the note again and again. And then suddenly he reached up and hit the side of his head with the flat of his hand. Hard – and not once but twice.

  ‘Of course,’ he said. ‘Why didn’t I see it before? It was staring me in the face.’

  ‘See what?’ asked Trave, mystified.

  ‘Who C is. Look, Albert wrote it down,’ he said, jabbing his finger at the word Hayrick.

  Something to do with farming, Trave had thought. Not like a name at all. But he’d clearly been wrong about that.

  ‘The name’s spelt wrong,’ Thorn explained. ‘That’s all. Maybe Albert scribbled it or you didn’t read it right. It should be Heydrich. That’s who C is. I can’t believe I didn’t work it out myself.’

  ‘Who’s Heydrich?’ asked Trave, beginning to feel out of his depth.

  ‘Reinhard Heydrich is head of the SD, the intelligence division of the SS, and he’s also in charge of the Gestapo,’ he said. ‘After Himmler, he’s perhaps the most feared man in the Third Reich, and unlike the other Nazi leaders he’s clever, fiendishly clever. Wait a minute – I can show you what he looks like.’

  Thorn was a man transformed. There was an excitement in his voice, an urgency that had been entirely absent before he deciphered the name on the note. He went over to a tall bookcase that ran almost the entire length of one wall of the room and began running his finger along the titles, up and down the overflowing
shelves, until he abruptly pulled out a tall book and took it over to the desk, pushing a pile of papers onto the floor to make room.

  He turned the pages rapidly, forward and back, until he found what he was looking for and then beckoned Trave over to join him. ‘Look, there he is,’ he said, jabbing his finger down at two large photographs on facing pages of the book. They were of the same man. In the first he was dressed in a black SS uniform, standing ramrod straight on an elevated rostrum with his arm rigidly raised in the Hitler salute as a line of goose-stepping soldiers marched past on the street below. Above his head, enormous red-and-black swastika banners hung down from flagpoles extending horizontally from the roofs of a row of tall, imposing nineteenth-century buildings – government buildings, Trave assumed – probably Berlin. And then on the opposite page, the man was shown seated, again in uniform but this time without the peaked cap. This was a studio portrait, an opportunity to get closer to the subject and more personal. Blond-haired, thin-lipped, classically handsome, he was a living embodiment of the Nazis’ Aryan ideal – a cruel Viking face with penetrating, ice-cold eyes, eyes that would miss nothing, Trave thought. He began to understand the intensity of Thorn’s reaction to the note.

  ‘Why does he call himself C?’ he asked, curious.

  ‘C’s what we call the head of the British Secret Service – C for chief, I suppose. And Heydrich knows that. He’s always loved spy novels, particularly British ones, and so he fancies himself as the German C.’

  ‘How do you know this?’

  ‘Because Albert told me. Not about Heydrich calling himself C, but everything else about him. Albert used to be C before he retired, and he was a walking encyclopedia when it came to the Nazi leaders. And apart from Hitler, Heydrich was the one he talked about the most. I should have made the connection. I think I nearly did on that first day, and that’s why I knew I had to bring the decoded message over here for him to look at. I realized unconsciously that the solution to the C riddle was in something he’d told me. And then Seaforth must have realized that Albert knew it was Heydrich when he ran into him outside HQ. Seaforth’s no fool, and he would have put two and two together – me grabbing the decoded message in the morning and Albert hotfooting it over there in the afternoon. And so he had to silence Albert before he talked to anyone else—’

  Thorn broke off. He’d become more and more agitated as he spoke, and now he closed his eyes and breathed deeply, trying to regain his self-control. ‘God, I wish I knew what they were planning,’ he resumed, shaking his head with frustration. It was now almost as if he had forgotten about Trave and were talking to himself. ‘All this time gone by and I still have no idea, except that it’s got to be something important if Heydrich’s behind it. I keep thinking it’s got something to do with the invasion because that’s what all Seaforth’s intelligence briefings have been about. If I had my way, I’d hold the bastard over that banister out there until he talked, just like he did to Albert—’

  Thorn stopped again, this time seized by a fit of coughing while Trave watched him from across the room. ‘How do you know it was Seaforth who intercepted Albert?’ he asked. ‘Surely it could have been someone else from where you work?’

  ‘I know it was him because of what he’s done since. He’s used Ava to frame her husband for the murder, and that’s got to be because he needs someone to take the blame for what he did.’

  ‘What evidence have you got for that?’ Trave asked sceptically.

  ‘I was in Ava’s flat three days ago when he admitted picking the locks on Bertram Brive’s desk—’

  ‘Where Ava found the cuff link?’ interrupted Trave, looking aghast.

  ‘That’s right. You look surprised. Didn’t you know about this? Your inspector was there too. He heard what had happened.’

  Trave looked thunderstruck – he couldn’t believe what he’d just heard. ‘God, it’s monstrous,’ he said.

  ‘What is?’

  ‘Quaid kept quiet about it deliberately. When Bertram said he’d been framed in the interview, Quaid said nothing about Seaforth opening the desk. He must have realized that Bertram would have been far less likely to confess if he’d known the full picture of what happened.’

  ‘Well, he seemed mighty friendly with Seaforth when they were in Ava’s flat, I can tell you that. It wasn’t the first time they’d talked.’

  ‘I know,’ said Trave. ‘I’m pretty sure it was Seaforth who told Quaid to keep your office out of the investigation, and then when I followed him to Coventry Street, he rang up Quaid and complained about me. I got a serious dressing-down. Quaid threatened me with a transfer to the military police.’

  ‘When was this?’

  ‘The day before Bertram was arrested. Seaforth was with Ava at the Corner House.’

  ‘Softening her up for the next day,’ said Thorn, looking furious. Trave sensed that there was a strong element of jealousy involved in Thorn’s reaction to Seaforth’s involvement with Ava, but that didn’t change the significance of what Thorn had told him about what had happened at Ava’s flat.

  ‘That’s got to be how Seaforth knew to bring the cuff link to plant in the desk,’ Thorn went on. ‘Your inspector must have told him about it, maybe when he rang up to complain about you.’

  ‘I tried to follow him again the next morning,’ said Trave.

  ‘That was brave.’

  ‘But he saw me. I never had a chance. He must have been on his way over to Battersea. And the funny thing was that he never complained about me that time. I thought my number was up, but nothing happened.’

  ‘Because he didn’t need to. Can’t you see that?’ asked Thorn impatiently. ‘He’d got what he wanted. Bertram had been arrested and so he wasn’t worried about Albert’s murder any more. He could concentrate on the bigger picture.’

  It wasn’t proof of Seaforth’s involvement, but it did at least make sense, thought Trave. He needed more, but for the first time the pieces of the jigsaw seemed to be fitting together. He was seized with a wave of anger against Quaid, but then he realized his own powerlessness. Quaid had the case sewn up, and there was no way he was going to allow Trave to reopen it. Not after the corners he’d cut to extract Bertram’s confession. ‘Isn’t there anything you can do?’ he asked, looking over at Thorn, who’d gone back to staring at the pictures of Heydrich in the book that was lying open on the desk.

  ‘Not without more evidence,’ said Thorn. ‘Seaforth’s the rising star where I work. His intelligence gets better each week, which isn’t surprising if he’s got a direct line to Heydrich. He’s leading the entire Secret Service by the nose, and they just don’t see it. And I’m worried that he’ll implement this plan prematurely if I go after him in the open. Really, I don’t know what to do, what angle to pursue. Maybe there’s something in his past. His father’s dead, but as far as I know, his mother’s still alive. It’s a long shot—’ Thorn broke off, looking dejected.

  Outside there was a new sound – aircraft overhead. And a few moments later there was the noise of explosions as the first bombs began to fall. The war had come to Battersea.

  CHAPTER 3

  Trave turned off the light and lifted the edge of the blackout curtain. Thorn came to stand beside him at the window and the two men looked out, transfixed by the sight that met their eyes. A welter of searchlight beams crisscrossed the darkening sky, moving madly from side to side as they tried to pick out the German planes flying overhead – Dorniers and Heinkels with big black crosses marked on their sides. They were dropping flares that hung in the air like Roman candles, exploding chandeliers of phosphorescent light that lit up the park across the road in lurid green and yellow colours. Concealed among the trees were the anti-aircraft guns that had sprung to life as the first bombs fell. The noise was tremendous – the roar of the aircraft; the sound of the AA shells bursting in mid-air; and the fainter patter of the planes’ machine guns firing continuously at the strange-looking otherworldly silver barrage balloons that still floated abov
e the park, tugged this way and that by the wind. Their panoply of wires kept the bombers high in the sky, but as Trave and Thorn watched, one of the balloons took a fatal hit and flamed grotesquely as it fell drunkenly to the ground.

  ‘Come on,’ Trave shouted, pulling Thorn by the arm. ‘We need to get out of here. They mean business tonight.’ It was dark in the room, and he knocked against the desk in his haste, hurting his hip. Thorn turned on the light and Trave found himself looking down at the close-up photograph of Heydrich. The SS leader’s piercing eyes seemed to follow him as he left the room.

  They made it down the stairs without mishap, although the building rocked several times as bombs exploded close by and they both almost slipped more than once on the shards of broken glass that littered the carpet, blown in from the landing windows that had shattered under the blasts. It was worst on the final flight leading down to the hall. There was no light, and Thorn reached out and took Trave’s arm, holding on to it as they descended. Like brothers, Trave thought as they negotiated the final steps.

  There was no one in sight, but they could hear frightened voices coming from the open door leading down to the basement from the back of the hall.

  ‘The residents take shelter there. Do you want to go down with them?’ asked Trave, remembering Mrs Graves, the downstairs neighbour, telling him how the caretaker allowed them the use of the basement during raids.