A Dangerous Act of Kindness

by A Dangerous Act of Kindness (retail) (epub)

  The captain studied the report again. Without looking up he continued, ‘What would you say if I told you that I know you stayed at Enington Farm and that Mrs Sanger fed you, helped you to burn your uniform and gave you her husband’s clothes to wear?’

  He raised his eyes, a smile of gentle confidence on his lips. He watched Lukas, his pebble-grey eyes boring into him.

  Abruptly he glanced towards the ceiling, as if a thought had struck him.

  ‘By the way,’ he said, his tone soothing, ‘I can assure you that she told no one.’

  Lukas dropped his head, shaking it from side to side. He was having trouble keeping his temper at bay. That irritating reassurance that Millie hadn’t betrayed him was infuriating. He had to deflect the captain from the truth. They didn’t know the whole story – the captain hadn’t mentioned the dislocated shoulder or the barn.

  ‘Let me put it to you,’ the captain continued, ‘that you stayed there not one night, but many. She’s an attractive young woman by all accounts; you’re a good-looking fellow. Locked away from the world by a blizzard, no chance of discovery, you form an attachment to one another, I might even suggest that you find your way into her bed. It’s a dangerous thing, propinquity – ah, there’s another word that may be unfamiliar to you – it means being in close proximity to another person. It’s causing chaos in London you know, the aphrodisiac of imminent death.’

  Lukas could feel his face blazing, not from embarrassment, but from fury. His chest began to heave and the pressure in his jaw clamped his teeth together like a vice. He didn’t want to look up, didn’t want the captain to know how angry he was.

  How dare this man reduce what had happened between him and Millie to the sordid couplings going on in Britain’s capital city.

  He struggled to calm himself, dropping his shoulders to force his body to relax. Eventually he looked up and said, ‘I break in. I steal from the house. I cannot help you.’

  ‘Well,’ the captain said with a sigh, ‘that is unfortunate.’

  He leaned back into his chair.

  ‘Not for you,’ he continued, ‘unless you count spending the rest of the war in Canada as unfortunate. No, I was thinking more about poor Mrs Sanger. We’ve got quite a lot of evidence in here,’ – he tapped the file with a forefinger – ‘which shows that she’s guilty of a very serious crime indeed: treason against her own country in time of war. I don’t know what the German policy is towards civilians under these circumstances but here, I’m afraid to say, it’s a hanging offence.’

  He closed the file with a flick of his hand.

  ‘But if, as you say, there is no attachment whatsoever between you and Mrs Sanger, that really shouldn’t trouble you at all.’

  Chapter Forty Six

  Hugh and his mother sat opposite each other in the sunshine outside the door of the game larder, an old sheet spread on the ground between them, plucking several brace of pigeons for supper.

  ‘Clever woman, that Ruby Skinner,’ Mrs Adamson said, her thin fingers working across the breast of the bird at extraordinary speed. The breeze was slight but still the feathers lifted and swirled around them, wisps of down catching on Hugh’s eyelashes and lips, making him spit and rub his face with his forearm. If he had his own way, he’d skin the damned things and be done with it. He usually managed to rip the skin anyway if he wasn’t careful.

  ‘She frightens the living daylights out of me,’ he said.

  ‘Ah, well. There is that, his mother said. She looked up at him through the cloud of down and feathers and raised a playful eyebrow. ‘I’m sure you can look after yourself.’

  ‘Hope so.’

  ‘She’s cunning all right, but there’s a heart in there. She’s been over every day to use the sewing machine, making things for this dance on Saturday.’

  Hugh popped his eyes. ‘She walked all the way over here?’

  ‘Course not. She gets that poor sap from The Royal Oak down in Shawstoke to bring her over. What’s his name? You know, that wide boy, great tall drink of water, flogs black market brandy.’

  ‘Ray Townsend.’

  ‘That’s him. He wondered if we wanted any extra petrol, by the way.’ Hugh knew exactly what that would be – bright red military issue petrol. ‘Gave me the fright of my life when I saw her stepping out of his car with a suitcase in her hand. Thought she’d fallen out with Millie and we were going to be landed with her…’

  ‘Bloody hell.’

  ‘… but she’d come to use the Singer. The case was full of bits and pieces, an old housecoat, couple of cardigans, that sort of thing. By the end of the day she’s whipped up a tea-dress with the sweetest puffed shoulders, made a gorgeous little bolero, as well as piped a coloured edge around an old blouse of Millie’s to make it look new.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘She was back the next day taking in a couple of panels of a dress for June.’

  ‘June was such a dumpy little thing when they first came,’ Hugh said.

  ‘Wasn’t she though? It’s amazing what good hard work in the fresh air can do for a person. She had that dreadful skin too, didn’t she?’

  ‘Did she?’

  ‘Mmm. Sallow. Working class skin.’

  ‘Mother,’ Hugh said, looking up at her from under his brows.

  ‘It’s true though.’

  ‘She looks all right to me.’

  ‘Now, yes. We’ve been feeding her proper food. We’re lucky out here with our extra perks. Anyway, Ruby disappears upstairs and spends the whole day working on the dress. She even adds a sweetheart collar to give it a bit of pizzazz.’ Mrs Adamson gave a chuckle, ‘When I complimented her, she shrugged it away, said she’d been making do and mending long before the war started. What else was a girl to do, she said, when she had an eye for fashion and a work-shy husband?’

  Hugh stopped plucking and stared down at the translucent skin of the bird, the large clot of blood where the shot had caught the pigeon full in the chest. It was there again, momentarily – that warm feeling that he’d see Millie on Saturday. Stupid really. He’d probably just irritate her, as usual.

  ‘She drives Millie up the wall,’ he said. Same way I do, he thought mournfully, pulling at the feathers again, that satisfying crunch as they came free.

  ‘Not surprised. She does rather take over a place. Assumes everything’s hers for the taking. I said to Mrs Farrow, “When that boy of yours comes here on leave, make sure Ruby doesn’t clap eyes on him.”’

  Hugh laughed and nodded a firm agreement.

  ‘All the nice girls love a sailor,’ he said.

  Mrs Adamson stopped working for a moment and looked up. ‘I’m glad you’re not out there,’ she said.

  ‘What? In the Atlantic, or fighting generally?’

  ‘I’m just glad farming’s a reserved occupation.’

  ‘I would have fought, you know.’

  ‘The job you do here is every bit as important.’

  They plucked on in companionable silence for a while and when they were done, Hugh took the birds into the game larder to draw and clean them while his mother gathered the feathers up in the sheet. She’d use them for stuffing cushions and bolsters, might even make some rough quilts from them for when the children arrived later in the year for harvest camp. She was good at that sort of thing.

  The clean smell of meths filled the larder. As he singed the feather stubs off the carcasses, he wondered if, deep down, Millie felt he should be fighting. He sighed heavily and watched a bluebottle, bumping on the dirty windowpane in front of him.

  He wondered why he kept trying to break through to her. Periodically he’d give up for a bit, lie on the windowsill exhausted, so to speak, but something always made him start again, tap, tap, tapping, every bit as stupid as that fly.

  The door to the game larder was open, just there and yet the fly couldn’t leave the promise of the sky on the other side of the glass. He’d be thirty in a few years time but still this childhood infatuation followed him like a sha
dow. Wasn’t it time he stopped bashing his head on the glass, time he abandoned this hopeless quest? Was it love he felt for Millie, or familiarity? He couldn’t tell any more but the closeness that had formed between them in the months after Jack’s death seemed quite gone now.

  He doused the flaming wad of cotton wool and rinsed his fingers under the tap, but before he gathered up the pigeons, he cupped his hands and chased the fly across the glass. He didn’t catch it. It broke free, headed straight for his face and as he swerved out of its way, it veered past him, out of the door, a tiny black dot against the bright sky.

  His attention was caught by a man on a bicycle bumping over the ruts of the track up to the game larder. As he neared, Hugh realised he was wearing a police uniform but his helmet was swinging from the handlebars of his bike like a bucket and his jacket was undone, revealing a vest, grey from frequent washing. He was not only slovenly, he was a deal younger than most of the local bobbies. Leaning his bike against the fence, he walked towards Hugh with a pronounced limp.

  ‘Can I help you?’ Hugh said.

  The constable had an unnerving smile on his face. It wasn’t friendly. It was rather insolent, superior even and Hugh found himself taking rather a dislike to the fellow.

  ‘Morning, sir,’ the constable said, putting unnecessary emphasis on the second word, ‘I was told I could find a Mr Adamson up here.’

  ‘You’ve found him. What can I do for you?’

  The constable narrowed his eyes and looked Hugh up and down, an expression of mild disdain on his face. Hugh wondered what was wrong with the fellow. Did he think he should be in the army fighting?

  ‘Sorry, sir. You’re not what I was expecting.’

  ‘In what way?’

  The constable stared back at Hugh but didn’t answer. Instead he drew a notebook from his pocket and stood, flicking through the pages. Hugh could feel his irritation rising. Eventually the constable said, ‘I’m following up on the parachute and harness that were found on your land.’

  ‘That was months ago,’ Hugh said. ‘I heard they caught the blighter.’

  ‘They did, sir. We’re just tying up a few loose ends,’ the constable said, getting out a grubby handkerchief to mop his brow. ‘It appears the man was on the run for a couple of weeks and we’re trying to work out if he took shelter anywhere up here.’

  ‘It’s pretty remote on the Downs.’

  ‘You have a good many outhouses, sir.’

  ‘We found the parachute miles that way,’ Hugh said, pointing to the distant horizon, ‘right on the boundary of my land. No one lives up there.’

  ‘And he couldn’t have made it as far as this?’

  ‘Would have been difficult with the blizzard.’

  ‘Only been at Shawstoke nick for a few months, sir.’

  ‘Right. Well, we had the most terrible weather just before Christmas. It made travelling cross country well-nigh impossible.’

  The constable looked out across the landscape and sucked his teeth.

  ‘Do you have neighbours?’

  ‘Only Mrs Sanger on the other side of the combe at Enington Farm.’

  Chapter Forty Seven

  Constable Hanratty cycled east. The day had warmed up and the ulcer on his leg was starting to throb. He was also feeling extremely dispirited. As the months passed, he seemed to be the only one at the nick interested in finding out what that bloody Hun was doing for the fortnight before he was caught, but he couldn’t forget the man or his arrogant, Teutonic looks. And he couldn’t forget Dunkirk.

  God, when they laid his stretcher on the deck, he felt so lucky. He didn’t give a bugger about the wound in his leg. All he cared about was that he was off that beach.

  Then he heard it, the rising scream of an engine, the thump, thump, thump of approaching bombs detonating in the water and the splintering crescendo of metal and screams and explosions as the bombs banged into the deck.

  He wasn’t even sure it was the same plane that came back to machine-gun them in the water. It didn’t matter. The face he saw in the cockpit now was the man he had by the hair in the prison cell in Coltenham, the bastard he drove his fists into. He wanted to beat that face until those pale blue Aryan eyes fluttered and closed. He’d had one of those evil bastards by the throat and someone had robbed him of his chance for revenge. His frustration was unbearable.

  He rode into the farmyard and a tall woman in Land Girl jodhpurs appeared in the doorway of the barn, wiping her hands on an oily rag.

  ‘I’m looking for Mrs Sanger,’ he said.

  ‘She’s inside,’ the woman answered, running her eyes across his uniform. He twitched the jacket closed and did up one of the buttons as he walked towards the farmhouse. Just before he knocked, he turned. The Land Girl stood in the exact same spot, watching him.

  ‘Mrs Sanger?’ he said to the attractive young girl who opened the door.

  ‘That’s right.’ She hardly looked old enough to be married, let alone run a farm.

  ‘Constable Hanratty from Shawstoke nick. I wondered if I might have a word.’

  ‘What about?’

  ‘May I come in?’

  She seemed to hesitate, her eyes sliding past him and down, then she said, ‘Of course.’ She walked away from him, along the corridor, saying over her shoulder, ‘Can I offer you anything? A glass of water?’

  ‘Thank you,’ he said, following her into the kitchen, ‘it is a bit warm today.’

  She passed him the drink which he downed in one, pulling his chin in to suppress a belch.

  ‘Thank you, miss – madam,’ he said, putting the glass on the table. ‘Mr Sanger in the forces, then?’

  ‘I’m a widow.’

  ‘A widow?’ he felt a wave of admiration for this cool young woman. ‘I’m sorry to hear that. Where was he killed?’

  Instead of replying, she went unnaturally still. He knew he’d made some sort of blunder and felt a mixture of embarrassment and anger.

  Why wouldn’t she say? Had her husband been a coward, a deserter? Or worse still, a conchie?

  Instead he plunged around in his jacket pocket for his notebook, flicking through the pages before saying, ‘Just before Christmas, a German pilot was picked up about ten miles from here.’

  ‘So I understand.’

  ‘Apparently the plane was downed near Norrington two weeks before he was caught and we’re trying to find out where he was during that time.’

  She stared impassively at him for a few moments then said, ‘How can I help?’

  ‘You didn’t notice anything untoward in the weeks leading up to Christmas?’

  ‘Such as?’

  ‘Strangers in the area. Signs that someone had sheltered in an outhouse, perhaps?’

  She shook her head.

  ‘Do you mind if I look around?’

  She accompanied him as he walked across the yard, peering into the stables, the milking parlour, the cowshed and the chicken coops.

  ‘No other buildings?’ he said.

  ‘None.’

  ‘What about lofts, maybe a cellar under the house with outside access…?’

  She gave a great sigh and said, ‘Look, Constable, this is a busy time of year for us and it seems a bit late in the day to be asking questions about something that happened nearly six months ago. It was a dreadful winter…’

  ‘So everyone keeps telling me.’

  ‘It’s hardly likely an injured pilot would make it all the way down here to hide in one of my barns when he’d have been better off taking refuge over Norrington way.’

  Constable Hanratty felt a nip of excitement in his gut. She stared back at him, impatience and faint dislike in those green eyes. He fought to keep himself from smiling. She had no idea she’d made a mistake.

  ‘Injured?’ he said.

  As he watched, her cheeks began to colour in that scalding, incriminating way. She turned away from him and looked at the ground as if to hide her expression, pushing a finger into her hairline.

&
nbsp; ‘I just assumed… a crash, bailing out at night, coming down on rough ground…’

  ‘At night. I see,’ he said but he didn’t move. He stayed anchored to the spot, watching her face shuffle through random, out-of-sequence emotions – a pucker of embarrassment, a frown of perplexity and a puff of defeat until she got herself under control, flared her nostrils and looked him straight in the eye.

  ‘Was there anything else?’ she said in a cold, calm voice.

  ‘Nothing else, madam,’ he said nodding ingratiatingly as he took his leave.

  As he cycled away from the farm, he wanted to punch the air in his excitement. Finally, he had something to go on and this time he wasn’t clutching at straws. Something happened up here, something involving that supercilious girl.

  Chapter Forty Eight

  On Sunday Millie didn’t go to church. Instead, she saddled up Pepper and rode along the perimeter of her holding, cataloguing the pockets of unused land. Within a year, she’d increased milk production sufficiently to get the farm upgraded to a B but she was aiming for another upgrade next year and needed to use every verge and scrap of land to increase production.

  She should be feeling so happy, riding across the Downs in the early spring sunshine but she wasn’t. She was desperately worried. Each time she thought about the constable, her insides squirmed with shame and fear.

  As she came into the yard, she saw Hugh’s Austin parked in the yard – he must have run the women back after church. He’d started coming over more lately, sometimes late in the afternoon, ostensibly to drop something in for Danny or to make a plan with the boy for the following day. He seemed to stay longer than was absolutely necessary, enjoying a chat and a laugh with Ruby while Millie and June were busy getting supper ready.

  She put Pepper in the paddock and made her way across the yard. As she approached the farmhouse, she thought she heard music. She sighed – Ruby had the wireless on again, full-blast as usual. She would be sashaying around the kitchen, wreathed in smoke – but she wasn’t.

  She was in some sort of clinch with Hugh, an arm draped across his shoulders, his hand grasped in hers. Hugh had her by the waist, holding her slightly away from him, staring down at his feet as he shuffled around the kitchen, chuckling at his ineptitude. June sat at the kitchen table with Danny on her knee, laughing. No one heard her come in.