The Yellow Glass

by Claire Ingrams

  “I told you,” I pointed out, “his name is Reg Arkonnen and he’s a murderer.”

  “And Hutchcraft and he worked together during the war,” he added.

  “Did they?” I was surprised to hear this.

  “Oh, yes. They parachuted glass into the Las Wolski forest, of that I have no doubt.”

  The room went quiet while we all attempted to picture this and then my mother spoke up:

  “May I ask a question?”

  “Please do, Mrs Stone.”

  “What is there in the microfiche that my sister found that leads you to suppose that the head of British Security is feathering his own nest, rather than working under the auspices of the British government?”

  I looked at her with unusual admiration; when had she ever used the word ‘auspices’?

  “Well done,” I mouthed across the room. “ ‘Auspices’, eh?”

  “I’ll ‘auspice’ you, if you’re not careful, Rosa Stone,” she said, with piercing clarity.

  “Well, that is an excellent question, if I may say so, Mrs Stone,” Mr Piotrowski continued, smoothly. “To which the answer is, in fact, pitifully simple because it is the eternal answer; the answer that always was and always will be.”

  We looked at one another, mystified. Was it a code of some sort? But Jay knew.

  “Money,” he said.

  “Indeed, Mr Tamang. The microfiche is one, interminable, wrangle over money. Unimaginably large sums of the stuff.”

  “But, surely,” I interjected, “anybody could be asking for payment? I mean, why wouldn’t the British Government want to be paid for their uranium?”

  “That’s right,” agreed my father. “Take arms-dealing, for example. The world is a huge market-place and who is to say whether those who claim to be enemies really refrain from trading with one another when there is good money to be made?”

  “Bad money, you mean,” went my mother.

  “These are valid points, but you forget one thing. I have known Hutchcraft since he was a boy of seventeen and I was in my early twenties, but, more than that, I have made it my business to study him. I know how Hutchcraft operates. I know how he bullies young operatives into his private army of shadows. I know how he uses the secrets of others to his own advantage. I know the ways in which he gains power. This new plot of his may show a deal more flair than his old methods - the peculiarly superfluous use of glass strikes an interesting note - but it cannot fool an old spy. I believe this to be his master-stroke, his most ambitious grab at power and wealth. It may be that there will be no more heights to scale after this is done; that we will hear no more of him. That he will simply leap off the topmost pinnacle and soar into the sky like a bird. I know this. Every bone in my old body knows this. And what’s more . . .”

  He paused to draw breath, like King Lear on the moor – that moment of calm before he rent his last shreds of civilisation and tossed them to the roaring winds and there was nothing left of him but raw, wounded, humanity.

  “ . . I know the number of his private bank account.”

  What? I have to say that we broke into laughter.

  “Yes, there it was on the last fiche. I cannot believe the old devil still banks in Cricklewood. What they make of regular cheques from the Komitet Gosudarstvennoi Bezopanosti in Cricklewood High Street, the Lord alone knows!”

  The case seemed clear. I mean to say, the British Government might well have been communicating in code with the Soviets in some devious game of double bluff, but they’d never have been asking for huge sums of money to be sent to Cricklewood. Of course not. Sitting beside me on the sofa, I noted that Jay was beaming from ear to ear.

  “Do you feel vindicated?” I asked him - just between ourselves - and he turned his beautiful smile my way.

  “I think I do, Rosa. Mr Upshott and I had it all the wrong way around. I am so happy to know this!” He became serious. “I believe that Professor Monkington may have stolen my work, that he may be working for Hutch . . and I ask myself whether Mr Upshott wasn’t deliberately led up the garden path when they put him to work on this operation?”

  “Of course he was, Jay,” I said. “You both were. You and Uncle Tristram are what they fear most, don’t you see?”

  “I’m not sure that I do. Please explain, Rosa.”

  “They fear you because you are both honourable men.”

  Our eyes met, but his suddenly had such a faraway look in them, it was rather as if my parents’ drawing-room in Kent had melted away and he had another world in his sights.

  “Honourable, yes.” He nodded his head, decisively. “And not afraid to die.”

  I shivered, abruptly reminded of Uncle Tristram. Were we doing enough for him? I got up, claiming hunger, and left the room.

  Upstairs in my bedroom, I ransacked piles of books and clothes, flinging the lot onto the floor when I couldn’t find what I was looking for. I’d tried every last place that I could think of, when I remembered my pink bedjacket. I ran into the bathroom to delve deep into the dirty linen basket. There it was and there, in the pocket, was the card that Sergeant Riley had given me when I was in hospital. I went into my parent’s bedroom to use the extension, keeping my voice down because Sam was asleep in the room next door.

  I managed to get through straight away, but it was to a female telephone operator on the Scotland Yard switchboard.

  “Good evening,” I said. “May I please speak to Sergeant Riley?”

  “What is it concerning, Miss?”

  “Well, it’s an emergency and I need to speak to him urgently, you see. He gave me his card and told me to ring this number if ever I had any more information on this extremely important case and . .”

  “Sergeant Riley has gone home, Miss, it being past eleven at night. May I give him a message, or would you like to try again tomorrow?”

  “Oh. Of course. How stupid of me; I’ve lost all track of time.” I tried to think clearly and concisely. “Please could you give him this urgent message. Really; it’s Top Priority, with capital letters. My name is Rosa Stone and I have irrefutable evidence that Sir Godfrey Hutchcraft is producing illegal uranium at Crab Bay, near Dover. That he is keeping my uncle, Tristram Upshott, imprisoned there and has already had two other men killed. The local police are investigating, but I don’t think they have the first idea how serious this is. I mean, I really think this is a case for Scotland Yard. Sergeant Riley will know what I’m talking about. Have you got that all that down? Do you take shorthand?”

  She said she had and she did, but whether it would make the slightest bit of difference, I couldn’t say. What if Uncle Tristram were already dead? What if he died that very night, while my message sat on Sergeant Riley’s desk waiting for him to turn up to work in the morning? Were we supposed to do nothing but wait, for ever and a day?

  I trailed back down the stairs, suddenly sick to my stomach with apprehension. I stopped off in the kitchen for something to eat, trying to still the terrible churning in my insides, but there were no chocolate buns left in the cake tin; probably because I’d eaten them all. Despair truly began to set in.

  Just then, I happened to glance through the glass on our kitchen door. A light burned in Coast Cottage, a warm, amber glow defying the black of night. What was it Portia had said in ‘The Merchant of Venice’?[50]

  That light we see is burning in my hall.

  How far that little candle throws his beams!

  So shines a good deed in a naughty world.

  I gazed at that light - taking comfort from it - and, as I gazed, a dark shape stepped into the Dyminge’s side window and looked straight at me. Major Dyminge was patrolling the cottage before they turned in for the night. Without a moment’s hesitation, I rapped on the glass.

  We met in Mrs Dyminge’s shingle garden among moonlit pools of thrift, the sea roaring great guns in our ears.

  “You were right, Major,” I cupped my palms over my mouth to cry into his ear, “there was another man involved apart from Arko
. Sir Godfrey Hutchcraft, the head of the British Secret Services. He’s gone rogue.”

  Major Dyminge nodded.

  “Big fish,” he shouted back. “I suspected as much.”

  I shivered in the cold, the wind whisking up my skirts and knotting my hair. A spring gale was beginning to brew.

  “They’ve got Uncle Tristram, did you know? Down by Crab Bay.”

  He didn’t move a muscle, yet it was as if an electric pulse had shot through him and amplified the ferocity of his singular, blue gaze.

  “Oh, Major . . .” Was it tears or the salt spray off the sea that stung so? “What if they kill him?” I collapsed onto his shoulder, openly weeping. “I don’t want him to die! Oh, Major Dyminge! Don’t let Uncle Tristram die!”

  “I should think not!” He fished a white handkerchief out his pocket and passed it to me, waiting patiently while I mopped up. I handed his sodden hankie back to him and looked out to sea, at the moon silvering the tops of the maddened waves.

  “May I ask a question, Rosa?”

  “Y . . yes,” I hiccupped.

  “What in the name of all things holy are we waiting for?”

  28. The Kelp Chamber

  Jay Tamang escaped. I had to believe that; would countenance nothing else. For myself, I got it in the neck from young Joe Bloggs, of course: the neck, the stomach, the legs and the privates. Christ, did I get it in the privates! It was a good thing Kathleen and I’d never wanted children . . not that my wife was still on the scene. Call me sentimental, but - bruised, battered and back on the caravan floor - it was only the thought of Kathleen that really hurt.

  The shadow had spared my face, so I assumed he’d not been officially let off the leash, that his anger had built up until he could contain it no longer and he’d acted against orders when he’d come for me in the night. What on earth were they keeping me for? It took too much energy to speculate any further, so I tried to keep calm and to rest as much as I possibly could before I got back to work with the jagged edge of the flint. Jay was more dextrous than I and he’d managed it before me, but I would get there in my own time. And, when I did . . .

  Hours passed before I finally got my hands free. The hood and the ties around my ankles were childsplay after that. I had to go carefully because parts of me were still horribly tender in places, but having made the initial, painful, effort to stand upright, I tried a tentative stretch and, eventually, even managed to perform a few officer training exercises that I’d forgotten all about in the intervening years since the war. It wasn’t pleasant, but it was possible and I was rather pleased with myself. Then I crouched down by the hinge of the caravan door to wait for the evening visit.

  ——

  “Yes!” Said Jay.

  “May I?” Mr Piotrowski enquired.

  “Both cars?” Asked my father.

  “I’ll drive,” said my aunt.

  My mother opened her mouth to speak, but:

  “Sam,” we said.

  She closed it again, frowning.

  “Excellent,” Major Dyminge pronounced. “You can drive my car, Kathleen. Let me just go and get my gun.”

  ——

  They must have imagined I’d be a bloody and broken reed because they sent just the one. I smashed the door into his face, tied him and locked up behind me with his key. There was nobody at all about, because the world outside had changed beyond recognition and a storm was raging. When they’d taken us it had been sunny spring, but now the grass lay flat in the wind and everything banged and rattled and icy rain - or was it spray off the sea? - whipped at my face, blinding me for a moment. The noise of the sea kicking up a storm was simply staggering - would have been staggering to anyone, but to a man who’d been kept blindfolded and bound for days on end, it was overwhelming. I had to force myself to open my eyes wide and then to get down on my hands and knees and crawl in the teeth of the wind towards the lift shaft. Because I wasn’t about to go home.

  They’d hidden it behind a hummock of sandbags, as if some type of sea defences were being built. I spent interminable minutes dragging the damp bags to one side, before I could bend over and peer down the shaft. There was distinct light at the bottom of the rabbit hole. I thought back to the day Jay and I’d arrived; I’d been in a pretty bad way after Severs had walloped me, but I didn’t remember the sound of a lift door shutting. It had to be an open, step on, step off contraption. As I gazed down the shaft, surprising wisps of intense heat reached me, sufficient to warm my cheeks, before the wind took off with them. Nobody was coming up, but, then, why would anybody wish to come up on such a night? I leant over to grasp the rope that held the lift, curled a foot around it and jumped.

  ——

  When Major Dyminge returned, it was with a pistol and his wife.

  “Babysitting?” She asked.

  My mother smiled.

  “Thank you, Frances,” she said. “Jerzy, I’m coming with you in the Crossley.”

  We were piling in when I noticed that Jay had disappeared.

  “What’s that boy doing down by the sea?” My father asked. “The storm waves will drag him in, if he’s not careful.”

  “Jay!” I hollered and he came back, bent double against the wind.

  He was carrying a rusty, old petrol can with a screw-top that he’d filched from Major Dyminge’s boat.

  “What are you doing with that?” I asked.

  “Oh, it’s just an idea. Are we ready to go?”

  ——

  I landed on the roof of the lift - a light, metal grille tacked into the upper frame - and bounced up and down, aiming to get the whole lift to drop enough for me to to slip through the gap and out onto the floor. The lift failed to budge, however, but a corner of the grille gave way and I tore the rest of it free and slid through, down into the lift and then out into the operations room. The sweltering heat immediately blasted into my face; a dry, desert heat that sucked the lingering damp of the storm from me, like blotting-paper. The operations room was empty. Nevertheless, I kept flush to the wall while I had a look around. Our arrival the previous week hadn’t given me much time to take stock, but I’d certainly clocked the giant piece of apparatus in the middle of the room. Yet, incredibly, given the size of that great, glass chemistry set, it seemed to have disappeared altogether. And that smell, too - an overpowering stink of rotten meat, or pickled shark that nobody, however done in, could have failed to notice - had dissipated, somewhat. It hadn’t gone altogether, but it was definitely less raw. Only a smattering of desiccated, brown flakes marked the site where the distillery had stood.

  As I watched, a breath of hot wind scooped the flakes up from the floor and swirled them into the air, where they spiralled, as if caught up in an invisible tornado. I searched for the source of the wind and soon found it; the heat was funnelling through a narrow opening within the cave wall. I went over and peeked in. A tunnel was plainly visible, stretching for fifty feet, or more. I squeezed inside the opening and struck out.

  The tunnel was wider inside than the aperture had suggested, but that was soon to change. The ground beneath my feet began to narrow, inch by inch, and the light to dwindle so rapidly that I could see little of my destination. I wobbled precariously, one foot balanced in front of the other, and stepped out into the strangest place. I was skewered by a sudden sense of vertigo, for the tunnel had delivered me to a ledge, high up on the cliff wall and the floor of the cavernous chamber in which I found myself lay a full fifty feet below.

  The chamber was full of seaweed, as if it were still possessed by the sea. Racks had been nailed into the chalk walls and ceiling - everywhere one looked - and immense lengths of dry, brown seaweed had been draped over them, like drowned men’s trousers hung out to dry. I reached out to touch a ribbon of the stuff and found the edge to be as crisp as any biscuit; when I took it between finger and thumb, it promptly crumbled and flakes sailed down into the chamber below, circling and dancing on currents of hot air.

  The giant, glass chemistr
y set had been brought into that eerie place and I could have sworn that it had grown. From my perch high up on the wall, it almost seemed alive, a creature of the depths crouched in its lair, shrieking and gulping as it churned up its insides in that festering heat. The stink was so horrendous that I was afraid I might swoon at any minute and drop, like a dead fly, from the ceiling. There was only so long that I could stand that stink, and I was preparing to turn tail and re-trace my steps when, down below, two men entered the chamber. One was bald and stooped and I knew him as the Monk, the other wore dark glasses and, when I’d last seen him, had been a Finn by the name of Arko Arkonnen.

  “ . . more glass?” Arkonnen’s voice echoed around the hollow void. “I don’t see . .”

  “It’s imperative, Mr Arkonnen,” replied Professor Monkington. “We cannot proceed without it. I hope you’re not going to renege on our agreement?”

  A crackle of dry laughter. I knew that laugh. Where the devil was he? An umbra parted the curtain of seaweed and stepped into the chamber. Hutch.

  “That wouldn’t do, Reginald old boy. Just wouldn’t do. As it is, you’ve been flailing about like a pig in mud. Am I right?”

  “Godfrey! You made it!”

  “Mmm. I’ve been rather held up by our friends in town; not answering my messages and so forth.” Hutch’s habitually dreary conversational tone barely made it up to me on my ledge.

  “Ah, we wondered what was keeping you.” Arkonnen went over and shook his hand. “Good to see you, Godfrey.”

  Professor Monkington wandered off to a set of filing cabinets that were ranged the length of one wall and bent to retrieve something within. He was still rootling around when the shadows burst into the chamber. There were five of them, each with a gun in his hand. It was difficult to see from my vantage point, but I was prepared to bet that one of them was Joe.