Authors: John Gardner
“Paragon,” said Suzie. “Must’ve had something wrong: Achilles Heel?” she thought, they’ve got me talking their lingo now: all quick bursts of information.
Curry nodded. “Achilles Heel,” nodded again. “A whole Achilles Foot as it happens. You know what his problem was. Saw it yesterday.”
“A woman? Emily Bascombe?”
“Women.
Women beware women.
”
“What?”
“Name of a play, Suzie. Webster I think. Someone soon after Shakespeare. We did him at school as well. Knew a fellow once…”
“Knew a fellow once, what?”
“Knew a fellow once who said you should read
Hamlet
every few weeks. Thought it had everything in it. Good as the Bible, this bloke used to say.”
“Really? And Colonel Tim Weaving had the itch?”
Curry nodded. “And scratched it regularly. Had several of them at one time but seemed to settle on this one. On your Emily. Knew it was trouble, he did. Spouted a lot of stuff about love…”
“But you okayed him? For the vetting? For COSSAC?”
“Of course. He was okay unless some female spy seduced him, and that wasn’t likely with me keeping an eye out. Most unlikely as the Abwehr doesn’t seem to know about selecting its spies. They’re all pretty duff. I should say
seemed
pretty duff.”
“Things’ve changed?”
“They’ve been like bloody Laurel and Hardy up to now. As fast as they came in we picked ’em up. We had one guy walked into a railway station and asked where he was, and another, in Ireland, who asked what time the next train was due when there hadn’t been a train for thirteen years. You get complacent when that happens a few times.”
The orchestra did a flourish, then a hesitant segue into ‘It’s a Lovely Day Tomorrow’. Suzie winced.
“They’ve been amazingly cooperative. Faced with death or a quiet life being played back they don’t choose death. We’re playing back all but two of them. That’s the trouble I suppose. Straws in the wind.”
“Straws in the wind?” Suzie repeated.
“We’ve had a few pointers. Picked up some clues that they’re running someone who’s aimed straight at COSSAC and the invasion plans. Christ, Suzie, I shouldn’t even mention this to you, but you saw Weaving and his girlfriend. They’d been through the wringer, been tortured. Someone was trying to extract information from them – at least from Weaving. Whoever did it either got what they wanted or went too far, killed him by accident and had to wipe out Emily Bascombe because she knew too much. This is urgent, Suzie. Very urgent, with a capital Urge because time is shrinking.”
“How urgent is a capital Urge?”
“Work it out – less than two weeks to Christmas, which means two and a bit weeks to the New Year which is when we expect an announcement about the Supreme Allied Commander. When that’s out of the bag the invasion plan’ll be almost set in stone and there’ll be those who will want to reorganise it, make changes, argue over it. I mean if Monty’s involved – and he has to be one way or another – he’ll want to alter the whole shooting match just on principle. There’ll only be a handful of weeks to bed it all down and decide on the date – May or June by my reckoning. It’s getting bloody close, and if they
have
got someone on the loose, and if he gets into COSSAC … well, there’s the element of surprise up the spout: might as well not go at all. I mean we’ll be right up the Swannee.”
“Then why’re you telling
me
all this?”
Curry gave a wide smile, engulfing her. She thought he looked so much younger when he smiled, and he seemed to know exactly what she was thinking. “You surely knew my people wanted you moved?” he said, heavy on the incredulity.
“Moved. Where moved?” she was almost angry.
Curry spoke low. “We did. We wanted you. They also wanted to give you the George Medal, after that business in ’40, but Tommy Livermore wouldn’t hear of it.”
Suzie’s jaw drooped. Just before she had been co-opted onto Tommy’s Reserve Squad, in 1940, she had learned that a team of senior officers, Tommy included, had put her on a list of young female officers set aside for special grooming and responsibility. They were, they said, ‘looking to the future’, to a time when women police officers would automatically have bigger accountability, play a greater role, within the Metropolitan police force when, at that time they were regarded as simply secretaries, or women to run errands for more senior officers. On Suzie’s first posting to a busy CID team her senior officer had asked her, “How d’you make a good cup of tea, Sergeant?”
“Tommy blocked the George Medal? They were going to..?”
“Said he didn’t want you to get above yourself. Also said that, while demanding a certain amount of courage, the incident was in your normal line of duty. That’s absolutely true. I saw the papers myself.”
“Normal line of duty?” voice rising so that Curry put his hand across the table and took hold of her wrist to quieten her. “Have you any idea what I did, Curry?”
He nodded, knowing that she’d been set up as a target for a psychotic killer who had almost strangled her. It had been in all the papers.
“I was in hospital for almost two weeks. Couldn’t talk properly for three.”
“He did say that you showed great pluck.”
“You sure that was the word he used. Curry? He was sleeping with me … that was his problem. Moved in with me. Probably thought I’d wear the gong on my nightie and it would get in the way.”
“Sush,” he stroked her hand and smiled at her as though she was a small child who could only understand simple things.
“I’ll pluck him,” she said, her mouth twisting. And the orchestra came to the end of ‘It’s a Lovely Day Tomorrow’. “I’ll pluck him alright.”
The orchestra was taking a welcome break and the players glanced in Suzie’s direction as they left the podium, the drummer giving a little end-of-set riffle on his snare drum.
“Suzie,” Curry in his calming voice. “Suzie, don’t go off at half cock.”
“I’ll make bloody certain that he never goes off at bloody half cock ever again.”
“Suzie.”
“I can hardly believe it. The bastard.”
“Suzie, it’s true. But there’s no point in having a big set-to about it…”
“Why not?”
“Because I’m not supposed to know, and you can’t say where you heard it. For one thing…”
“Oh, you bloody public school boys are all the same. Why don’t you just drive me straight back to Wantage and I’ll resign from his bloody Reserve Squad. Resign from the Met.”
“There’s no need for you to do that. No need for you to resign. We can simply have you transferred. My boss’ll welcome you with the proverbial open arms.”
“Who’s the ‘we’ in ‘we can simply have you transferred’?”
“War Office Intelligence Liaison. Couple of dingy offices near Baker Street tube station. Plenty of dust and the odd popping gas fire – the usual appurtenances of people in the spy trade.”
“I wouldn’t be brought over just to clean and make the coffee?” her hand raised in warning.
“You’d be out in the field. May even be dangerous.”
She frowned, then nodded. “Give me a couple of days. I’d like to pick my time for leaving. Stage the dramatic walk out. Know what I mean?”
“I know exactly what you mean,” said Curry Shepherd with a grin.
They drove back in silence until they got into Grove Street where he stopped the car out of sight from The Bear across the Market Square. Feeling very daring, Suzie reached up and kissed Curry on the cheek, just a swift peck during which she wondered what the real thing would be like.
She crossed the Square and let herself into the hotel; picked up her key then went over the cobbles to climb the narrow stairway leading to the Coffee Room, preparing to negotiate the tables and get into the corridor leading to her room. She reached the top, blinked and took one step forward when someone moved in the blackness ahead.
“Who’s there?” she asked, loud enough to sound like the voice of authority.
“Oh, Skip. Thank heaven it’s you.” Shirley Cox was beside her.
“What the hell?”
“I had to come over with a report from Ron and Laura. Delivered it to the Chief, but I’ve hung on hoping to see you. I tried your door…”
“What is it, Shirley?”
“Just thought you’d like to know. The Chief’s in his room alright, but he’s not on his tod. She’s in here. Cathy Wimereux, our gallant new sergeant. Very cosy it looked.”
Chapter Seven
“NICE TIME WITH Charles?” Tommy stayed behind his newspaper, one hand on the toast rack, the remains of his bacon and tomato pushed to one side. Suzie always reckoned Tommy as a messy eater, particularly when there was Worcester sauce around. The paper’s headlines were divided, the main story, taking up half the front page, concerned General Henry (Hap) Arnold of the 8
th
US Army Air Force declaring that they were almost ready to start a 24-hour 360-degree bombing campaign on Germany, from North, South, East and West. He had said, “We’re going to hit them every day, and the RAF’s going to do it every night.” The other story was confirmation that Field Marshal Rommel had been appointed C-in-C of ‘Fortress Europe’.
“Charles who?” Suzie asked, pulling up a chair: sitting.
Tommy put the paper down and helped himself to another slice of toast. He didn’t look at Suzie. “Your uncle Charles. Dinner with him last night, didn’t you say?”
A waitress in a full length wraparound apron poured coffee for Suzie.
“No. I told you I was having dinner with my uncle Rupert.”
“Who’s he? Don’t know him. Never heard of him, heart.” Still did it without looking.
“He’s my great uncle on my mother’s side.”
“Ah.” Exaggerating the nod. “I spoke to the ma last night.”
“Oh, shit,” Suzie, brought up by Anglican nuns, thought.
“
My
ma, that is.”
Sigh of relief.
“All very smart, she’d been with Pa to have tea with Mr and Mrs King. Buck House and all that crap, eh?”
This time
she nodded.
He still wasn’t looking at her. At one point the Countess of Kingscote, Tommy’s ma – once described as overbearing as a land mine – had been a lady-in-waiting to the Queen so afternoon teas, or lunches, at Buckingham Palace were regular occurrences which Tommy loathed.
“Loads of gossip,” he said. “Talk of an arranged marriage between Princess Elizabeth and Philip of Greece, but the best is that they’re very worried about the balcony. Structurally unsafe so it’s being strengthened with concrete because they want to use it when celebrating the victory. A jot presumptuous I thought. Lot of dying to be done before that day.”
“Lot of gongs to be won as well,” it was out before Suzie could stop herself. Oh shit she thought again and was sure that Tommy stiffened without looking at her.
“Yes, heart. Yes, I suppose so. How was it at the Noah’s Ark? Any good at all?”
So he knew. “You have your spies everywhere,” she said.
“Just like you, heart. Everywhere from what I hear.”
Oh, very comical, yes. She was saved from answering by Cathy Wimereux sliding into the seat next to Tommy and giving a breathless “Good morning,” throaty but underplayed and leaving Suzie in no doubt about what had been going on while she had been with Curry.
Cathy wore a biscuit coloured skirt with a jacket top – the latest Utility design with a bit of light blue piping round the lapels. Her old gold hair had a sheen to it, smooth as bloody silk, Suzie thought. Like that bloody complexion, sodding peaches and cream.
“Right,” Tommy pushed his chair back. “In the Murder Room at nine sharp.” Stood up. “I’ll be briefing the Squad on what today’s going to be all about, if you’d care to be there Susannah.”
He looked at Suzie for the first time that morning and she saw the glint of anger in his eyes. Like a death ray, she thought. Like a death ray that you’d read about in kids comics. But she couldn’t define whether the hatred was for her or himself. It had been a long time since she’d seen a kids’ comic: back when she was living at home and her brother James was there in the school holidays. Now James had followed his uncle Vernon Fox’s lead and was at the Royal Marine Depot, Deal – a Y-Scheme candidate, potential officer.
Tommy turned, squared his shoulders and strode towards the restaurant doors, back straight yet somehow different: a view of him she never remembered seeing before, a stiffness of gait, the angry way he cocked and held his head.
In the thirty seconds or so that it took him to reach the doors, Suzie’s mind was peppered with a collage of images from her recent past with Tommy Livermore: the first meeting, then the first dinner they’d had in The Ritz when he told her that she was on a list of women earmarked for promotion against the future; their first kiss, the delicious love they’d shared; the secret things, hiding it all from other people; the moment he had made her a woman, had taught her the arcane language and physical tricks of love; his body; the delicious feeling of being in thrall to him; the devotion she had felt; the long days of immense summer pleasure and the short days of winter bleakness as he had started to let his true self show from inside the carapace that was his reality together with his extraordinary vulgarity.
Inside, Suzie reeled as if she had been punched in the face. For a long time she had been trying to find a way of finishing it, but now that it had happened all she felt was anger. She turned her head, glaring at Cathy Wimereux. She still had Tommy’s last words echoing in her ears: “In the Murder Room at nine sharp. I’ll be briefing the squad on what today’s going to be all about, if you’d care to be there Susannah.”
“Well Cathy,” knowing that there were tears forming in her eyes Suzie bit her lip. “Well, did he debrief you last night?”
“Suzie … I … I…”
“Don’t bother,” she spat out quietly. “I’ve only been living with him for the past three years. You’re welcome to him,” and she rose from the table and stalked out, thinking this was all a bit adolescent. Like people in their teens when it was almost a matter of life or death to know who loved whom, who was out and who was in.
Last year Tommy, in one of his amazingly gentle moments had written another poem for her, left it under her pillow: