Troubled Midnight (20 page)

Sadler had been totally dominated by the Nazi ideal, for him it was like a drug, or as though he had been hypnotised, which in some senses he had in falling under Hitler’s spell. For Sadler it was both the power and the glory. Yet now, and only occasionally, he questioned it, as if there was a weakness, a chink in the steel of his will, a fissure through which doubts assailed him. He became terrified of these suggestions of a loss of faith. He considered that he was like a holy man going through the dark night of the soul. To him it was no real threat, yet on the drive back to Brize Norton on that frosty night before Christmas, things started to go seriously wrong in his head.

He concluded that he might even have the bulk of the information on
Overlord
before the week was out. After all, he needed only the headings: where, when, how and an outline of the logistics. And tomorrow he would be with Colonel Belcher and the others inside Norfolk House, the headquarters of COSSAC in St. James’s Square listening to a recital of the outline plan. The Abwehr could work out the strengths themselves. Osterlind had said they were listening to hours of military radio traffic as the British, American and other armies moved around the highways and byways of southern England and East Anglia.

Then there was the other side of the coin, the dark side. There was a point when the jeep was only a couple of miles from Brize that Sadler actually contemplated throwing the whole thing overboard: giving up, getting himself moved to some non-combatant outfit and then lying low. When it was all over he could seek out his German masters, even at this stage he could not conceive of Hitler’s great armies losing. From what he knew about tactics and strategy he was aware that an all-out assault on the Channel coastline of Northern France was a mad, unrealistic gamble. With Rommel in command of Fortress Europe the Allies would be swept back into the bloodstained sea in a matter of days.

He had even heard the rumour that the whole scheme had been hatched by the Americans, and everybody knew that as a race their kind of military thinking was at the best shaky. In the past few days, someone had even said he knew for a fact that Churchill favoured an advance through Portugal.

When Linnet finally pulled the jeep into the park in front of the officers’ mess and switched off the engine, Sadler turned to him and quietly told him not to worry the WAAF corporal about losing contact with the two Special Branch officers, or whatever they were. “With any luck, I’ll have the information we need by tomorrow night, or the next day.” He said, keeping his voice down.

“But…” Linnet started.

“I’ve had second thoughts,” Sadler leaned towards him. “I think what we’ve been doing is wrong and it’s essential now that we keep our heads down, become really invisible like the ghosts we are.”

Linnet again opened his mouth, but Sadler shut him up with a simple wave of the hand, got out of the jeep and walked quietly towards his quarters in the Nissen hut backing on to the mess.

Ten minutes later, in uniform, Sadler came into the bar. The CO, Colonel Belcher, was there with a RAF redcap, a squadron leader who had come over to take a look at the breaches of security: the shooting and the bombing of the civilian car.

Sadler shook hands with the squadron leader and said how relieved he was to know there was a professional on the job. He then asked, “Who were those two, Shepherd and Mountford?”

“Couple of funnies,” the squadron leader said with his mouth turned down as if to say that funnies were not his cup of tea.

“Really?” Sadler put on his I’m-impressed voice. “What kind of funnies?”

“Funnies is funnies. Intelligence is better left to the cavalry,” the squadron leader snorted. “Something to do with liaison with other funnies I understand.”

“Never held with funnies,” Bart Belcher snarled. “Funnies’re irregulars in my experience. Neither fish, flesh, fowl nor good red herring.”

“They’re certainly fishy,” said the squadron leader laughing loudly at what he thought was a profound witticism.

*   *   *

HE WAS AMAZED because Suzie cooked him four rashers of bacon for breakfast – more than one person’s ration for a week, unheard of. “Make the most of it,” she said, “I’ve only got eight more rashers left and I don’t see Tommy’s people wandering down with more for me now I’m a thing of the past.”

She had also boiled some potatoes the night before and left them in the cold cupboard let into one of the flat’s outside walls and adjacent to a window. It had a door on it covered in tight wire mesh, and the whole cupboard interior and shelves were fashioned out of cold stone. It was the nearest thing Suzie could afford to a refrigerator. Refrigerators were prohibitively expensive and not readily available in spite of the advertisements from the Electricity Development Association telling you that electric fridges were there to help you Wage War on Waste. Next to Curry’s four rashers was a pile of fried cold potatoes. Suzie only managed two rashers and a few of the potatoes because she had butterflies of excitement in her stomach: going to meet the new boss.

“Tommy always said something to try and get my angora,” she said. “Sometimes I’d put a huge meal in front of him, meat and two veg, and he’d say, ‘Tell you what would be nice with this, a few baby carrots’. He was pulling my leg, of course, see if I’d rise to the bait, and I often did. If I’d put rashers and fried spuds in front of him he’d say that a few fried tomatoes would be nice with it. Now, I mean he’d say it, in winter, when you can’t get tomatoes.”

“He hasn’t changed very much. I fagged for him at m’tutor’s and when I did his tea it was never right. I’d get him crumpets in winter and he’d want cucumber sandwiches. Like you say, when you couldn’t get cucumber. In winter. There’s no way of bottling cucumbers is there?”

“Not a chance. Mummy bottles everything she can lay her hands on. She bottles tomatoes but you can’t use them for a fry-up. Can only really use them in soups or a stew.”

“You’re a fount of information, Suzie. Don’t know how I managed without you.”

They walked down to Charing Cross and got a taxi to the Courtauld Institute of Art, then walked through Portman Street to Baker Street and on to Ivor Place. “Never ask for Baker Street or Ivor Place in a taxi,” Curry counselled her. “In fact it’s a good rule never to direct a taxi to wherever you’re really going. Always check for a tail – surveillance, I mean. You just can’t be too careful. It’s as well to watch your back wherever you’re going. In the business you’re in now you should really assume that somebody’s got the dogs on you most of the time. Not necessarily the Krauts, you’d be surprised. Our French allies watch us a good deal. Don’t really trust us. Still think we ran away and hung them out to dry at Dunkirk. Then there was the Oran business of course.”

Suzie nodded sagely, “Of course,” remembering that the Royal Navy had sunk elements of the French fleet off Oran, when they had refused to join with the British. Many had been killed.

Ruth was wearing a purple woollen Jaeger dress (
The Best in Utility,
they advertised) that didn’t really suit her, the skirt a little too long and narrow, meant she couldn’t take her usual long strides. Curry said, “A stitch in time saves coupons, I see.” And Ruth glared at him.

A large tough-looking customer sat near to what Suzie presumed was Elsie’s office door.

“Wotcher, Eddie,” Curry greeted him and the big fellow, whose nose was decidedly off-centre, gave an evil grin, “Wotcher, Curry me old horse. How y’doing?”

“Decidedly well, Ed. Better than some.”

“Yea? Well the gaffer’s waiting to see you. A band of hope all ye who enter here.” Another grin, still evil and he leaned over and opened the door for them.

“Ed’s the boss’s bodyguard,” Curry told her.

The first thing Suzie saw in the office was a small portable organ standing the middle of the room, a pile of sheet music on the music rest, while an old big wooden desk took up almost the entire width of the rear wall. On the desk were four telephones drowning in a sea of paper, and behind it there seemed to be a reddish glow that turned out to be L C Partridge.

Elsie was a difficult man to describe, tall, but in no way distinguished, with a dome of a bald head, ginger hair, in smooth segments, sleek on each side, above the ears, bright light eyes, a mouth set in what seemed to be a permanent smile plus an aquiline nose, big and beaky. He was dressed in a ginger three-piece tartan check suit, white shirt and russet-coloured tie.

When he spoke it was like being captured in an enthusiasm of words sprayed out by a fizzing human bomb, short sentences shot from his mouth, words bubbled over one another, sometimes mixing several subjects into one sentence.

“Ah, Curry, how lovely to see you. My word, and you’re the famous Suzie Mountford. Come in, come in. Goodness me you’re a pretty girl, I must say. A very pretty girl. Sit down then Suzie. And you Curry. No standing on ceremony here. Come now, sit ye down the pair of you. Sit ye down.” Delight just flooded out of him.

They sat and waited. Suzie said later that her waiting was done with bated breath. “For the first time ever I know what bated breath really means – restrained breathing, I suppose. Or abated breathing. Whichever, I waited with it.”

Elsie leaned back in his chair, folded his hands over his waistcoat and gave them a benevolent smile. “You’ve had a rough old time, the pair of you.”

“We know,” Curry said silkily. Curry, Suzie decided, could do silky quite well.

“Shot at, eh? Then nearly blown to Hades. Oh my as Ratty would have said to Mole – Oh My! Oh My! Oh My! Ah, sorry. Suzie, welcome. Glad to see you here, good to have you on the team.” Sounding like some football captain.

Elsie bent his head forward and, for a second, Suzie saw the top of his head was covered in what the Germans call
Sommersprossen
while we, the English, more prosaically call them, freckles.

“Well, Suzie,” he continued, looking at her with his pale gooseberry green eyes wide, almost pleading, “What do you make of it? Do you think Colonel Weaving was murdered while being questioned? And, if so, what do you imagine the questions concerned?”

For a moment Suzie had the strange idea that she was being interrogated by a foreigner. “I think he died while he was being tortured, yes, sir.” Dried for a second or two and Elsie leaned forward, nodded, saying “Good,” under his breath, and again, “Good.”

“And the only thing that makes sense is that he was being questioned about the invasion plans.” Pause. “I think, sir.”

“You think?”

“Yes.”

“Curry?”

“I don’t think, boss, I know that’s what happened. Just as I know we’ve frightened him, panicked him, because the bugger tried to bury us.”

“Quite so, quite so. Yes, I think Curry’s right, Suzie. As you said, it’s the only thing that makes sense.” And he was off talking nineteen to the dozen for it became clear a lot of work had already gone into the case. Tim Weaving died early on Wednesday morning. It was now only Friday yet Elsie Partridge was telling them what men he called Big Peter and Little Trevor had discovered in that relatively short space of time.

“You’ll meet Peter and Trevor in due course, Suzie,” Elsie leaned forward and grasped her wrist. “Good fellows to have around you in a scrap, eh Curry? But they’re also not lazy when it comes to the intellectual stuff, the brainpower, you know. They’ve been down to see the poor parents in Devon. Weaving’s people. They’re in a state, I can tell you. Idolised Tim and very proud of him. Odd point, though. Tim was supposed to be engaged to the girl Richardson, what?”

“Julia Richardson,” Suzie provided.

“Quite. Precisely. Fount of information you are, Suzie. Don’t know how we’ve managed without you.” And behind his hand Curry gurgled and Suzie tried to stop herself smirking, realising that Curry had been setting her up when he’d used almost the same words earlier.

“Well, funny thing, both of you, but the old parents knew nothing about it. One of many girlfriends, they said, the old loves. Engagement? No, bewildered, so Trev, who’s very quick on these things, young Trevor steered the conversation into another direction. Cold are we Curry? You shivering, eh?”

“It is rather chilly,” Suzie said with a thin smile, not showing her teeth, still hiding the giggles.

“Pop the gas fire on, Curry old love. Put a match to it. Should have done it first thing but don’t feel as chilly as you ladies. Probably got more on than you,” he chortled, no end of an old dog. “You girls in your little nothings, eh? Ho-ho.”

When a match was put to the three-bar fire it lighted with an amazing whumph. “Small bomb that bloody thing,” Elsie said. And one of the elements was broken so the heat being thrown out was irregular. It also popped in the old tradition of gas fires in official houses.

“We’re looking at two women, girlfriends of the late Colonel Weaving. Anne…”

“Tooks,” said Suzie.

“Tooks. Fount of information, Suzie, absolute fount. Tooks has her own money, lots of it and a flat in Hands Place, handy for Harrods, just round the corner. Doesn’t seem to have many friends though. Very few callers, bit of a loner. And, of course we’ve been taking a look at the fair Julia Richardson, lives in Shepherd Street. Amazing area that. Ladies of the night, frail sisterhood, girls’ boarding houses, proper slice of sin round there. Damned difficult place to put watchers they tell me. Fellows standing about casually get accosted every few minutes. Some tart comes stooging up, ‘Want to come home with me, dear?’ I mean what does a fellow say to that?”

Elsie paused for breath and Curry nipped in, “We
have
established, boss … I mean those two girls … We … I’ve established…”

“Yes. Of course, Curry. Does Suzie know?”

“Doubt it, boss.”

“Well,” he settled back, fingers linked over the waistcoat. “Clever old Curry here, Suzie. Damned smart, old Curry. Our victim, poor Colonel Weaving, last twelve, eighteen, months, had only
two
lady friends.” He looked up, turning the full power of his dark eyes on Curry Shepherd. “Little Trevor spotted it as well, when they went to talk to the parents, break the news, that kind of thing, they said – the parents – he seemed only interested in two. Ann Tooks and the fair Julia Richardson. They said that before Anne he had played the field. I think they meant just about every field you could run across, couldn’t do a hand’s turn without coming across one of Tim Weaving’s girls.” He, of course, pronounced it, ‘gels,’ and Suzie wondered when the hell Curry had managed to come up with the information concerning Tim Weaving’s girlfriends.