The Secret Generations (52 page)

Charles nodded,
‘Yes, I accept that Fiske was the carrier; and the only way to explain the chemist, Douthwaite, and the unfortunate Mrs MacGregor, is that unwittingly they both made some kind of discovery. And Mrs MacGregor was his lover,’ Charles added.

Which left Bridget and the attempt on Malcolm; and who was responsible for the killing of Hanna Haas?

Wood produced the signal ordering ‘The Fisherman’ to Dublin. Suddenly, Charles realized that he was in this room, not to help with ‘The Fisherman’ murders, but to share any ideas he might have concerning Hanna Haas’ death. Thomson had taken him into the web. Now Wood and Partridge were to question him – for the hundredth time, it seemed. He sighed, loudly.

‘
Look, Charles,’ Brian Wood almost invariably still called him sir, but as a chief inspector he occasionally lapsed. Now, the lapse was timed, carefully, like a comforting hand laid on an arm. You are among friends, it said. ‘Both David Partridge and myself have been through the files. We have access. We know what’s passed. You’re cleared. Nobody suspects you of double-dealing. Folly and indiscretion, yes. But not murder or treachery.’

‘
So?’

‘
So, just a few ideas. It hit you hard at the time. Did you have any suspicions that she was in danger?’ Yes, of course he suspected. She was scared stiff: terrified.

‘
Of what?’

Terrified of her own people and his. He told of her horror of coming under MI5
’s protection. ‘She said it was too soon.’ And she gave him the succulent morsel about ‘The Fisherman’.

‘
In your opinion, sir,’ Partridge this time, replete with respect, ‘which of our two sides would have benefited most to have her out of the way?’

‘
Hers of course – if they knew she was under my protection.’ How did they know? he thought, then said the words aloud.

‘
Quite,’ Wood smiled. ‘She was good. Would have spotted someone playing Wenceslas’ Page, treading in her footsteps?’

‘
Yes, she would.’ Then Charles stopped. ‘By rights she should have spotted your people as well.’

‘
With respect, so should you.’

A little light flared in Charles
’ mind.
He
should have spotted the watchers. Aloud he wondered if she
had
spotted them. Wood asked him why he said that.

‘
Because I’m really not sure, now, which side
did
benefit most by her death.’

‘
Who could have done it, Charles? Kell’s boys? He carries a few spares with enough violence in them to do away with someone.’

He shook his head.
‘C’s plug uglies?’

‘
Or the Admiralty. I wouldn’t put anything past the DNI, or DID, or whatever he calls himself. Unless, she was being run as a double by a Firm other than yours, Charles. C’s outfit, or the Admiralty’s Intelligence department. Please think about it.’

He had thought, and wondered how the killer had got into the Hans Crescent building without being spotted. How had they missed the killer on those strange listening devices?

*

Ramillies was absent from the Foreign Office for two days.

He took a morning train to Glasgow, stayed overnight at the Central Hotel and then paid a visit to the Bank of Scotland’s main Glasgow branch.

The visit took less than half an hour.

He returned on the afternoon train, went home and was back at his desk the following morning.

On that last visit to his grandfather, Ramillies had turned as he reached the door.
‘No, sir,’ looking into the hard eyes. ‘No, it’s not really like playing chess. More like draughts –what the Americans call chequers.’

His grandfather had smiled, and the ice turned to a white warm fire of pleasure.

*

‘
The Fisherman’ found a nice little guest house in Bristol which catered for sailors between ships, and, each night, he followed their last instructions – set up his wireless, tuned it, gave his call sign for ten minutes, waited for fifteen, gave his sign for another ten, and waited for a further five.

There was no contact. No orders, and he knew what this meant. Find a good target and destroy it before the end of the year. Soon, he would move further north.

*

Sergeant Billy Crook VC stood,
tired, near the firestep, dragging on his cigarette, wondering if it had all been some incredible dream. Now, back in the makeshift life, the cheek by jowl existence with death, he could hardly believe it.

Lady Sara telling him that Vera was in the club, asking him if he loved her, or if it was merely lust. Billy had been so startled that he had immediately declared his love for Vera.
‘Always loved her.’

‘
If that’s true, Billy, you’d better go and speak to her now. Ask her to marry you, and leave all the arrangements to me.’

And before he knew it, there were special arrangements, a licence wangled from the Bishop by Lady Sara; and two days
after he got back to Redhill, there he was standing in Church with Will Averton, the blind organist, pumping out the Wedding March, and Vera coming down the aisle on Commander Andrew Railton’s arm, and Ted Natter trumpeting into his handkerchief, and Ken Raines with George Sharp, who had both been to school with him, laughing and giggling their heads off, and old Gregory, the schoolmaster, looking amazed that someone like him – Billy Crook – should be old enough to marry at all. And there was Porter – the old soldier, former servant and friend to The General, now looking decrepit, sad, lonely, pensioned off by the family and given a cottage – but there, proud, at the wedding, wearing his medals and trying to stand straight, as if to say, ‘I represent The General.’

Rachel Berry was what they called Matron of Honour, while townsfolk and people from Redhill laughed and cheered when they came out of Church.

Lady Sara did them proud, laying on a big spread in the Manor, and arranging a real hotel in Oxford for two nights, and then the last two in London, so that Vera could see him off on the train.

As for Vera, she promised to be
‘A real helpmeet, Billy. A true wife to you, that’s my vow.’ Then she almost devoured him in bed at that Oxford hotel, and when he did her she came like the old Haversage Tramway Company’s train whistle, so that he thought everyone in the whole blessed house would hear.

And it went on like that, every night for the whole time, right up to an hour before he had to catch the train.

He smiled grimly as the machine-guns began to rattle; having seen the front along their part of the line Billy did not fancy their chances. Attacking over the top along the Somme was, in his humble opinion, as stupid as walking straight into a threshing machine at harvest time.

*

They brought Roger Casement to trial on 26 June and even dragged Paddy Quinn out of retirement to be present.

Casement was charged with six specific overt acts of treason, including soliciting and inciting British subjects who were
‘…prisoners of war at Limburg Lahan Camp to renounce their allegiance and fight against the King.’

The trial lasted three days, and the jury was left in no doubt of its duty by the Lord Chief Justice. They were out for one hour only. The verdict,
Guilty
.

Before sentence of death was passed, Casement read a long, rambling, vain statement whi
ch seemed almost to aim at warping history. Immediately after sentence he lodged an appeal.

There followed a strange incident in which none of the Railtons took an active part. Yet all of them heard the rumours, and wondered on the truth.

The Prime Minister wavered over the death sentence passed on Casement. Public opinion changed to sympathy, and there was much lobbying. One of the many protests was signed by powerful men, including authors like John Galsworthy, Arnold Bennett and GK Chesterton. The Americans put Asquith under pressure, and Cabinet Ministers warned that Casement should be allowed to live.

The Branch had been out to nail Casement for years. Now,
‘Blinker’ Hall and Basil Thomson had done it. Also, whatever the truth about Casement’s statement – that he wanted to stop an Irish rebellion – Hall and Thomson had successfully kept the Press at bay and almost surely contributed to that unhappy Easter Rising which allowed the military to inflict ruthless justice.

It is said that Hall and Thomson now inflicted a justice of their own. Alarmed that the death sentence would not be carried out, they dug into the secret hoard originally taken from Sir Roger
’s flat – the diaries.

Certain pages were copied, and backed up with original photographs. The extracts were chosen with care, for they all proved Casement to be a sexual deviant
– an acknowledged homosexual. The documents were sent, it is again said, on Hall’s and Thomson’s instructions, under plain envelope, by messenger. They went to the most influential of those who lobbied for the Irishman’s life: to people who could be frightened off by being seen to support a homosexual – still a grave and revolting sin at that time. So, by guile, ‘Blinker’ Hall and Basil Thomson brought their man to his destiny: or so some say.

Any sympathy for Casement quite suddenly evaporated, and the Appeal was dismissed. He was hung on 3 August, the day Charles had arranged for the second attempt at getting Mildred to meet Dr Harris, who came to Cheyne Walk as
‘a colleague’.

*

Mildred was embarrassingly wild and excited, even flirting with Harris. During the meal, and later, Charles listened, noting the odd question dropped into the conversation by the doctor. As the evening progressed Mildred began to slip into a darker, more nervous mood. Her confidence appeared to dwindle, and at about ten-thirty in the evening, she excused herself and went to bed.

Harris remained silent for a few minutes, sipping his brandy.

‘She needs to be in hospital, old chap,’ he said at last. ‘It doesn’t require an expert to see that she’s an addict, probably morphine, and in an advanced state. You can’t just commit her, and we can’t even appeal to the medical man from whom she’s getting the stuff.’

‘
What happens if…?’

‘
If we do nothing? Charles, I’m sorry. She’s far gone. It’ll take a long time, with concentrated medical care, to bring her back to normal. It could be impossible. If we do nothing she’ll be dead within three months.’

*

Denise Grenot, under the name of Jacqueline Baune, boarded the tram at her usual stop, in Lanaken. For some time she had been doing the run about twice a week; there was great need for information about German reinforcements as the great battles along the Western Front plunged to and fro, winning or losing a couple of hundred yards here or there.

The
Frankignoul
network had done more than its fair share to provide accurate and regular intelligence reports, and they followed what was considered to be a foolproof system.

Two members of the organization always made the tram journey into Holland together, one carrying the information in the sole of a shoe or sewn into clothing, or by some other ingenious method; the other was the lookout. Today, Denise was watching an old Belgian called Paul who carried the latest figures on munitions trains.

Her job was to make certain that Paul got into Holland safely, and made the rendezvous with their contact in Maastricht. She had to be sure the carrier was not followed, then check that she had not been watched. After an hour or so, she would return, with a full shopping bag, to Belgium.

They reached the frontier post, and the German police c
ame on board. It was usually a perfunctory search, yet somehow, today Denise detected tension. The Germans hardly looked at anything, or anybody. They appeared to take no notice of Paul, who carried a shopping bag which seemed to have been made of a hundred pieces of differently dyed leather, patched together over long winter evenings. Paul was well over seventy years of age, and looked frail.

This was an asset to them. Who would imagine an old fool like Paul would have the wit to smuggle information into Holland for onward communication?

Denise became concerned. The police still did nothing, but they were definitely loitering. The tram driver called to them, asking in a mixture of French and German how much longer they were going to be? One of the policemen shrugged and pretended to look under the seats.

She heard the car before she actually saw it, an open motor with a long bonnet: four men packed into the seats. They wore German uniforms and exploded from the car like a team of comic acrobats, but there was nothing amusing about these men.

One carried a rifle, the others were armed with pistols, and they came straight onto the tram, making a bee-line for Paul. He did not even protest as they dragged him away.

Nobody took any notice: there was already enough trouble in their lives. Best not to fuss. Look the other way.

The bell clanged, and the tram rattled forward towards Holland, and the Dutch border guards. The last Denise saw of Paul was one of the soldiers punching him as they pushed the old man into the car. She thought she glimpsed blood on his face.