Authors: John Gardner
Curry told them Camp XX was not about getting spies to face the firing squad. “It wasn’t so much about termination as playing them back to Nazi Germany.” Certainly, the staff tried to de-gut them, fillet them, clean them out, but the aim was not to see them ending up on the Tower of London Rifle Range. “They were treated well. The object of the exercise was to get them working with us. Any odd bits of information on the side were a bonus.”
Most of the captured spies, and they had caught the bulk of them – mainly because they were brought into England and Wales in such a ham-handed fashion – finally bowed to the inevitable and sent their messages in their prescribed way. “The information sent was, of course, the stuff we gave them. I only know of two who refused to cooperate. Alas, they ended up on the Tower’s Rifle Range at six o’clock in the morning. Not a glamorous end for the Fatherland and Führer.”
Curry worked at Camp XX for three months. After that he went on a couple of courses, was upped to major and now operated as what he described as “a floating go-between in the intelligence community”.
“And where’re you floatin’ at the moment?” Tommy’s drawl became worse and Curry started to show a shadow of annoyance.
“I drift between the MI6, MI5, Camp XX and the boys in Baker Street, Tom. You know who the boys in Baker Street are?” Like throwing down the gauntlet.
“Would they have anything to do with Sherlock Holmes or Dr Watson?”
“Close,” Curry smiled and told him to try again. “After all, Tommy, you’ve got a sister in the business.”
Suzie, as much as she tried couldn’t stop the flush creeping from her neck onto her cheeks. She had spent that one night of unfaithfulness to Tommy after seeing him with another woman, in close heads-together conversation. Only later did she discover the truth, that it was his sister, Alison, back on a brief visit from doing something incredibly hush-hush. The tune of ‘This Can’t be Love’ ran through her head and her cheeks became redder.
Tommy sucked his teeth. “Must be an off-shoot of one of the other funny groups, organisations, departments, whatever you call them.”
Curry said, “Okay,” loudly as though Tommy had made a bold stab at the answer and landed close to the truth. Then he laid it out. “The boys in Baker Street’re various sections of the SOE – Special Operations Executive: the people who are at the sharp end of setting Europe ablaze, which was what Winston asked them to do. They’re not just in Baker Street of course but that’s as good a generic address as any for them.” For a moment the pale grey eyes caressed Suzie, once more making her feel uneasy.
“And who do I work for?” he asked, as though either Tommy or Suzie had formed the question in the way they looked at him. “Well, you might say England, or Winston – and that would be right – but the true answer is the CIGS: General Sir Alan Brooke himself, my old boss, now elevated to head soldier. Chief of the Imperial General Staff, and the word is that he’ll be a Field Marshal by the New Year.”
“Always said you’d go far, young Shepherd,” Tommy muttered. “Lonely up there at the top is it?”
“Tommy, tell me you’d rather be working with me at your back. The alternative would be the hairy great coppers with Special Branch. Not a nice thought.”
Tommy, Suzie noticed, didn’t meet his eye, sucked his teeth again, noncommittal. At last he said, “Then tell me why I have to work with you, Curry?”
“Because I’m dealing with security for COSSAC.”
“And what’s COSSAC when it’s home?”
“Chief of Staff to the Supreme Allied Commander. A post that has operated since April without a Supreme Allied Commander.”
Tommy nodded. “Yes.”
“But they’ll appoint one soon enough,” Curry smiled. “And next year he’ll be bustling along in front of us all, but there are two reasons why you should be particularly interested in all this…”
“Do tell,” Tommy, face set in a rictus, acid in his throat.
Curry nodded, as if to say he understood Tommy’s caustic manner. “Please, I want you to know what’s going on. What I’m going to tell you next is totally classified. It mustn’t leave either of your brains…”
“Oh, come on…” Tommy began.
“COSSAC lives, moves and has its being down in St James’s Square. Norfolk House, know it Tom?”
“I know where it is. Pinky-red building.”
“Good,” Curry’s normal attitude of languor changed and the words now cracked like bullets passing overhead. “Good, because every couple of days or so there are meetings at COSSAC: forty or fifty senior officers, colonels and upwards, under General Frederick Morgan. These men have been planning the greatest battle so far in this damned war: the invasion of the occupied continent, Hitler’s Fortress Europe.”
“Really?”
“Yes, really, Tom. These men know when, where and, to a great extent, how the invasion’ll take place. So they sit on the greatest secret alive in this country at the moment. And, Tommy, maybe you’ll sit up when I tell you that Lieutenant Colonel Tim Weaving was a member of that planning committee. Tim Weaving was a keeper of many of those secrets, so it’s sort of important if he died being tortured. Think about it.”
During these last words, Curry Shepherd had taken a few steps back towards the door. Now he had reached it, and with a little mock bow and flourish he said, “I go. I come back.”
He hadn’t been out of the door for more than five seconds before Suzie realised that she missed him.
Chapter Five
THEY WENT OVER to The Bear Hotel – Tommy, with Suzie and Cathy Wimereux, together with Dennis Free, while the rest of the team found their rooms at The Blue Boar, opposite the Post Office. Tommy, Suzie thought, had used his considerable charm on the lady at reception to get rooms facing onto the Market Square and so close to one another that, to use his own expression, he’d know when she changed her mind.
For some reason she couldn’t quite comprehend, Suzie was feeling unusually indecisive, and had done so for some time. Not that she had to make any immediate decisions, but deep within her she felt uncertain about life: about her life at the moment within the Metropolitan police, and her long term life with Tommy. The last wasn’t new as she’d been putting him off for the best part of a year, and felt guilty about it. Tommy was the man who had made her into a woman and taught her to love – not just in the physical sense, but in the more lasting and profound way, expanding her mind, helping her to reach higher, to stretch out towards unexplored horizons, teaching her to laugh. Laughter was important she discovered. But Tommy was a good deal older than Suzie. She wondered if this was at the root of the problem.
Cathy and Dennis Free were banished to quarters in the rear of the hotel, but Tommy said all four of them would lunch together in the large dining room. “One-ish.” He told them. The others, at The Blue Boar, would have to fend for themselves.
While Tommy was welded to the telephone in his room, giving instructions and talking to Scotland Yard, Suzie was content to slip away and join Cathy Wimereux for a pre-lunch glass of sherry in the long Coffee Room: the place where she had taken tea with Tommy on their visit back in August.
For the first time that day Suzie relaxed and found herself pouring out her reasons for joining the Met, talking about her rise to a responsible position in the Reserve Squad.
She had joined the Metropolitan Police almost in a fit of pique. In the late 1930s her beloved father had died in a road accident within sight of his Georgian house, Larksbrook, outside Newbury. With his death the spoiled idyll of Suzie’s pampered middle class life came close to destruction. A year later, her mother, Helen, announced she was going to marry for a second time, her choice being the totally unsuitable ‘Galloping Major’ as Suzie and her sister Charlotte called the portly, strutting, fussy little Ross Gordon-Lowe DSO.
Charlotte was already away from home, married with two children – one of them gravely handicapped – and Suzie, goaded by her dislike of her mother’s new husband, and after a furious row with him, took the easy way out by enlisting in the Met (“I can always arrest the little bugger”). She rose quickly through WPC to a posting with CID as a Woman Detective Sergeant, and from there to Tommy Livermore’s Reserve Squad, discovering on the way that she had been earmarked for promotion by an unlikely cabal of senior officers with an eye to what would most benefit the force in future years.
Cathy already knew about the events of Christmas 1940 when Charlotte had tragically died, the children now cared for by Helen and the odious Gordon-Lowe.
Now in spite of some pointed questions, Suzie did not go into the details of her long affair with Tommy Livermore, and the fact that she shared her London bolthole in Upper St Martin’s Lane, with her boss. Suzie, however, got the impression that Cathy already knew most of the details of that side of her life and merely wanted them confirmed.
It was only when Tommy and Dennis Free arrived for lunch that she realised how Cathy had quietly loosened her tongue and drawn out her life story with a minimum of fuss, proving that Cathy Wimereux was a skilled and cunning copper: one to be watched, Suzie thought.
At just before one o’clock they sat down to lunch under the careful ministrations of the head waiter – in fact the only waiter – the saturnine Harris who, after he’d served the first course, told Tommy the manager would like a word.
“I’m free at the moment if he’d like to interrupt my lunch.” Tommy snapped as Harris removed his soup plate. Like the Demon King in pantomime the manager – a short, plump man in need of a haircut, and with a moustache that seemed to be wearing him instead of vice versa – arrived in the dining room just as Tommy looked at the menu to identify what had been set before him by way of an entrée. The menu said
Jambon Extraodinaire.
“It certainly is most extraordinaire,” Tommy muttered as the manager gave a small cough to indicate he was there, shifting from foot to foot beside Tommy’s chair.
“Yes?” Tommy barked and the manager coughed again.
“Detective Inspector Livermore…?” he began and Cathy raised her head, ruffled as though she had visible hackles rising rapidly. “Detective Inspector?” she all but shouted, while small spots of crimson appeared on Suzie’s cheeks: she never could stand public unpleasantness and they both knew the Detective Inspector error would illicit rage from Tommy.
“Detective Chief Superintendent if you don’t mind,” Cathy glared at the preening little manager, very much aware of DCS Livermore’s reputation for accuracy and his treatment of fools: Tommy Livermore, it was said, became riled more easily than a bull faced with a cardinal’s hat.
“Don’t worry about it,” Tommy, who would normally be furious, turned on the quiet charm, immediately angering both Cathy and Suzie.
“What can I do for you?” The terrible smile aimed straight at the manager and neatly at the two women detective sergeants at the same time, a trick performed with oily skill.
“Well, Detective Chief Superintendent…” he began and Suzie, now furious at her Chief’s decision to play things out of character, tried to score one for the girls by muttering, “Detective Chief Superintendent, the
Honourable
Tommy Livermore…”
Tommy shot her a glance containing several daggers as he unlocked his eyes from her’s and told the manager to speak up.
“It’s simply the ration books,” the man smiled a ludicrous smirk. “We don’t know how long you’re here for, sir, and we need the ration books.” Hands spread wide, like a man claiming to be at the mercy of petty bureaucracy – which of course he was.
Again they all waited, the pause laced with the hiss of a smouldering fuse.
“Think nothing of it,” the terrible smile again, then, for reasons of his own, Tommy lapsed into a kind of stage cockney, “Down the nick,” he grinned, eyes glittering.
Darn the nick.
“Down the bottom of Mill Street. That inspector down there, give him a bell, eh? Tinkle him and he’ll see to it, right? Got an entire office up the Yard to deal with the petty restrictions of wartime: ration books, identity cards, rail warrants all that bumf. That Inspector – Turnbull. He’ll see you right. Right?” Which was good coming from Tommy who, when in a hotel, was not above sending for provisions to be driven in from the Home Farm at Kingscote Grange, where his parents, the Earl and Countess of Kingscote, lived out their gilded country lives.
Tommy liked to disappear into characters of his own invention: west country folks who called you, ‘my dove’ or ‘my robin’; Geordies who sprinkled their conversation with ‘hinnies’; ‘bottles of beer’; and ‘why ayes’; and of course, the cheeky cockney sparrow they’d just heard. “Know what I mean?” He added now.
“Certainly, sir. Yes, sir.” The manager backed away, adding that there was a nice rabbit stew for tonight, as though hinting that Tommy Livermore would be served with the lion’s share of the rabbit which was a kind of mixed metaphor.
“Don’t worry about that,” Tommy called, a little loudly. “If it’s rabbits you need I’ll have some sent over from my father’s farm. Just say the word.” He turned towards Cathy and spoke in almost a whisper, “Remind me to give Billy a bell. He can call the farm and we’ll have a consignment of dead bunnies down here quicker than you can say ‘twelve bore’.”
Several people looked up from their food and scowled. The word had already got out of course. Mrs ‘Bunny’ Bascombe lay dead in her cellar and her husband, Bobby, the hero winner of the VC would be coming home from the desert to bury her. Not really done to joke about ‘dead bunnies’.
Billy was Billy Mulligan, Tommy’s executive sergeant, who dealt with the business and office side of the Reserve Squad. Like Brian, Billy had been familiar with the Kingscote estate long before Tommy Livermore even considered becoming a copper.
Lunch finally having been digested, with the aid of a cup of filthy coffee, they walked back down Mill Street, Suzie and Cathy pondering Tommy’s pronunciation of ‘darn’ for ‘down’ when he was in his cockney mode. “That was a real meal,” Suzie said.
A reel meel,
one of Jack Warner’s catch phrases, like
Mind my bike
and
My bruvver Sid.