SS-GB (16 page)

‘But how many people on this side of the Atlantic know what he said?’ asked Douglas. ‘And what chance is there to tell them?’

‘We’re not immediately concerned with that,’ said Sir Robert. ‘Our primary task is to ensure that Rear-Admiral Conolly’s position in Washington cannot be attacked through either the legal process, or through the Protocol Office. Last week he had to fight off attempts to take physical possession of the Embassy building. And the Germans are using some of the best lawyers in America.’

Bernard said, ‘Even now, the case is not settled. If the Germans take over that building it will be a bad blow to Conolly’s prestige in Washington.’

‘Then you are in touch with Conolly?’ said Douglas. He was unable to keep a note of surprise out of his voice.

No one answered. Having declined Sir Robert’s Upmann cigars, Mayhew took his time lighting one of his own Romeo y Julietas. Bernard! thought Douglas. He must be the courier.

They continued to play, offering each other considerate words, as men might do when their card game occupied their thoughts to the exclusion of all else. Sir Robert alone played with the intensity of a man who hates to lose. ‘Not many people using the Tower
of London nowadays,’ said Mayhew casually, as if discussing attendances at the Test Match against Australia.

So that was it, thought Douglas. Huth was right. These men were contemplating an attempt to get the King released from the Tower. ‘The SS Special Security Battalion is quartered there,’ said Douglas.

Sir Robert’s eyes opened a fraction wider. Mayhew permitted himself a flicker of a smile. If that wasn’t Superintendent Archer’s way of saying he wanted no part of any attempt to tackle those SS infantrymen, it sounded an urgent caution.

‘If the King was free and able to confirm publicly Conolly’s rank and position, it would transform Britain’s position in the world,’ said Bernard.

Would it, wondered Douglas. He was cynical enough to suspect that it might only change the position of Conolly and his associates. He looked at the other three, resenting the well-bred superiority of their manner. ‘You’re not seriously suggesting a physical assault against the Tower of London, are you?’ he asked.

The three men moved uneasily. Then Mayhew said, ‘With respect, Sir Robert, and in spite of our previous conversation, we’ll have to put Superintendent Archer in the picture.’

‘I was thinking that myself,’ said Sir Robert.

Bernard said nothing. He had no need to remind them that this was exactly what he’d told them to do.

‘The German army will help us in every way they can, short of getting into a fight,’ said Mayhew.

‘Why?’ said Douglas.

‘They feel that it is incompatible with the honour of the German army that the King of England should be in custody and guarded by SS units.’

Sir Robert added, ‘And the escape of the King from
SS custody would disgrace the SS and consolidate the army Commander-in-Chief in his position of power here.’

‘Not only here,’ said Mayhew. ‘The repercussions would be felt in Berlin. We have the support of the General Staff for this business.’

Douglas nodded. As preposterous as it would be in British terms, it fitted in to his knowledge and experience of the Germans. ‘I think I might be able to provide for you an even more valuable ally,’ he said. ‘I believe SS-Standartenführer Dr Oskar Huth might wish your expedition well.’

‘Huth?’ said Mayhew. ‘Why?’

‘Kellerman is the senior SS officer in Britain, as well as being police chief. Any failure to keep the King in custody would inevitably result in his being fired. I believe Huth covets Kellerman’s job, but the two men hate each other with such venom that ambition would be only of secondary importance.’

‘Well, I’ll be damned,’ said Sir Robert.

‘It makes sense to me,’ said Mayhew. ‘With a fellow like that prepared to turn a blind eye to it, things would be much easier.’

‘What’s the next step?’ said Sir Robert. ‘Can you sound out your man Huth?’

‘Not without mentioning names,’ said Douglas. ‘You’d better nominate someone who’d be prepared to act as go-between.’

‘It could be dangerous,’ said Mayhew. ‘It could be a trap.’

‘That’s a monumental understatement,’ said Douglas. ‘It might well be a trap.’

‘I’ll be the go-between. I think it’s worth the risk,’ said Bernard. ‘What do I have to do?’

‘Nothing,’ said Douglas. ‘I simply have to have someone I can name as a spokesman for you all. But
think about it overnight, Bernard. Sir Robert and Colonel Mayhew might decide you’re too valuable to be risked in a gambit like this.’

‘I think so,’ said Sir Robert. ‘I’m sorry, Bernard, but I couldn’t allow it.’ There was a long silence in the room; the discussion was at an end.

‘Well, let me know,’ said Douglas. ‘I’ll protect him as far as I can, of course.’

Mayhew put the pack of cards together decisively. ‘I think that’s enough.’

Douglas looked at his watch. ‘I should be going.’

‘Just a moment,’ Sir Robert said. ‘These gentlemen owe us money.’

A handful of pennies were exchanged. Douglas said goodnight to Sir Robert and Bernard and Mayhew walked with him along the dark corridor. They stood at the top of the staircase. ‘I’ll say goodnight, Archer,’ he said but he stood as if there was something else.

‘You haven’t asked me to let up on the Shepherd Market murder investigation,’ said Douglas.

Mayhew flinched. ‘It would be a good thing for all concerned,’ said Mayhew.

‘Including me?’

‘In the long run, yes.’ He smiled. ‘You knew what I was going to say?’

‘Half the population of London seem to be concerned lest I solve that murder. Why should you be an exception?’

Mayhew’s smile was fixed on his face like a cheap papier-mâché mask. ‘Well, think about it, Archer,’ he said.

‘I already have,’ said Douglas. ‘Goodnight.’ He did not offer to shake hands.

Douglas was in the car with Barbara Barga before they had exchanged more than a brief greeting and a circumspect hug. She was not drunk, or even under the influence as the English courts define it, but she was relaxed, and cat-like, inclined to smile at jokes that she did not reveal. ‘Wasn’t that a swell party?’

‘Parties like that are an acquired taste.’

‘Then I’ve acquired it,’ she said. ‘Even as we were leaving, the waiters were bringing Moët by the case, and those one-pound size tins of beluga caviar. Some style those guys have.’

‘You could as well say Al Capone had style.’

‘But honey, I did say that. I did a two-part feature story for
Saturday Evening Post
a year or more back. I located two old-time beer-barons in Gary, Indiana – that’s just across the stateline from Chicago, onetime haven for the hoodlums…and these guys gave me a great story. And I said that Al Capone had style – I actually said that.’ She tugged at Douglas’s sleeve with that earnest determination to be understood and believed, that so often comes with an extra few drinks.

Douglas looked out of the window of the car. He resented the way in which Garin and Shetland had provided a car-service for the guests, and resented the influence that had provided for the cars the ‘Essential Service’ windscreen stickers that enabled them to break curfew. He resented the way that he’d had to revise his opinion about Garin and Shetland – shameless collaborators and crooks – and come to terms with the fact that they were respected and admired by
Mayhew and Sir Robert, and his old friend Bernard. Only slowly could he bring himself to modify that resentment. Hearing Barbara Barga praising the party did nothing to help.

‘Don’t be sore,’ she said, reaching out a hand from where she was slumped in the corner of the soft leather seat. ‘Don’t let Al Capone come between us.’

‘I’m sorry,’ said Douglas. He turned just as she leaned forward. They collided.

‘Ouch!’ she said and rubbed her nose. The sudden and unexpected physical contact reawakened in Douglas a mixture of urgency, awkwardness, ardency and despair that he had not known since the calf-love of his schooldays.

The car was heading towards Belgravia. ‘This is not the way to the Dorchester,’ said Douglas.

‘Do you have to be a cop twenty-four hours every day? I’ve rented a little town house near Belgrave Square. It belongs to friends who’ve returned to Missouri for three months, and didn’t want to leave it empty. Do you know they’ve had fourteen robberies in that tiny mews in the last three months.’

‘Well don’t hold me personally responsible for all the crime in London,’ said Douglas clumsily. It had always been like this when he was young; the girls he wanted most were the ones he offended and with whom he made a fool of himself.

‘I’d ask you in for a drink,’ she said, ‘but they asked us all to send the cars back as soon as possible for the other guests.’

Douglas reached across her and opened the door before the driver could do so. ‘No problem about that – stay where you are, driver! – I can phone for a car from the Yard.’ He got out with her.

‘My researcher says that having access to a car in this town is a sign of favour – you must be an important
man at Scotland Yard.’ She got the keys from her handbag.

‘Everyone keeps telling me I am,’ said Douglas. He looked at the tiny mews house; cobbled forecourt and ivy on the walls. A few years ago they were considered only just good enough for coachmen or chauffeurs; now, with the coach-houses converted to sitting-rooms, such places were becoming chic.

Once inside she switched on the lights one by one. Douglas admired the paintwork and panelling, all done with a craftsmanship that was fast disappearing – and the furnishings too. It wasn’t to his taste – huge Chinese vases converted into table lamps, white moquette on the floor and a Persian carpet on the wall – but it was undeniably comfortable. ‘What does your friend from Missouri do for a living?’ said Douglas. ‘Run an opium den?’

‘You’re a cruel bastard,’ she said affably.

‘Well it’s all very luxurious.’ He took off his overcoat.

She had not removed her coat and now she turned up the fur collar.

‘Do you know the origin of the word mews?’ she asked, and hurried on before he could spoil the obvious pleasure she got from telling him. ‘It means a cage for hawks. In the olden days a mews was where the royal hunting birds were kept.’

‘I didn’t know that,’ he said.

She smiled. Just for one moment he saw the little girl she once was; smiling proudly at some word of praise. He loved that little girl and the clever, and beautiful, young woman she’d become and for the first time, he dared to think she might feel the same way about him.

He didn’t dwell upon the thought. He turned away and studied the books on the shelf, forcing himself to
read the titles and exclude all else from his mind.
Encyclopaedia Britannica
, 14th edition, four guidebooks to London, one of them with a cracked spine, a large Sears Roebuck Catalog with more than a dozen page-markers visible, a Manhattan telephone directory, a small atlas and a pocket-size English dictionary with a companion volume German one. He felt her watching him, but he did not turn round. He looked at the typewriter on a small table by the fire. Alongside it, a half-used packet of lightweight paper, held down by a Rolleiflex camera, a pot of face-cream and a dozen hairpins. The waste basket was half-filled with screwed-up sheets of typing paper.

‘Matches?’ He went to help her.

‘You Brits don’t feel the cold, do you?’ They were very close now, crouching together at the fireplace. He could almost feel the warmth of her body. She was looking at him, perhaps trying to see why he didn’t feel the cold. She got to her feet, and stepped back from him. ‘There’s no heat here,’ she said.

He knew she meant central heating. He smiled. He turned the tap and lit the gas. There was a loud noise as it ignited. He stood up.

‘In my country,’ she added quickly, ‘even a blue-collar worker wants something better than a cold-water walk-up, with fixed-point heating.’ She stepped back again and stood very still. For a moment he was about to put his arms round her but she shivered and turned away, and went through the swing doors into the adjoining kitchen.

‘Gee, there were some terrible people there tonight,’ she said from the kitchen.

Douglas followed her. ‘That’s the trouble with wars,’ he said.

‘You can say that again. I was in Catalonia and in Madrid. That’s the way it goes, believe me. Blackshirts,
redshirts, brownshirts; the same lousy crooks are trying to take over the world. I’ve seen those same sort of greedy-eyed politicians from the Chaco to Addis Ababa.’

‘That sounds like a lot of wars.’

‘I was eighteen when my paper sent me down to Paraguay, to cover the fighting in Chaco. Since then I’ve sent stories from China, Ethiopia, Spain, and last year I was in Abbeville when the German Panzer Divisions arrived.’

‘It’s a strange job for a woman,’ said Douglas.

‘Don’t be an English stuffed shirt.’ She turned on the water-tap. The pipes squealed and the metal drummed as she filled the percolator. She got a tin of coffee from the cupboard. ‘I’ve got real coffee. What would you say to that, Superintendent?’

‘You went to a war when you were only eighteen?’ said Douglas. ‘What did your father say?’

‘He owned the newspaper.’

She looked up at him and smiled. He looked back at her and stared calmly into her eyes. Until then, the prospect had been nothing more than a flirtation, or at the most a brief affair. It would not be the first time she’d exploited some influential official in some war-torn land for the sake of her job. But now she found the tables turned; she was beginning to like this gentlemanly English cop in ways over which she had no control.

She tried all the tactics that had worked so well before. She remembered all the other lousy selfish foreign lovers she’d had. She concentrated upon the latter part of her failed marriage, the misery of the break-up, and the bitterness of the divorce. But it was no good; this man was different. ‘Do you take sugar, Superintendent?’ Or was it just that she was more vulnerable, lonelier in this godforsaken miserable city than she’d ever been before?