Bad Sons (Booker & Cash Book 1) (28 page)

By the time she was spraying the loose surface all over the car park, accelerating away from my home, we had a little over two hours before the train departed. We’d be cutting it fine.

We drove to where she lived in Hythe. I was more than a little interested to see where Jo made her home. If she had any feelings about revealing where she lived to me she didn’t share or show them.

She drove into an estate of purpose-built flats and took a numbered parking space outside an ugly, functional, squat building ranged over four floors. She didn’t invite me in. I was glad I had my atlas to read and a timepiece to monitor the ticking away of our valuable minutes.

As a veteran of two marriages and a small number of lesser relationships of varying durations, I was no stranger to a woman’s idea of a
‘quick change of clothes’
. My spirits were understandably low then as I sat wasting time.

With only a view of the communal bins to distract me from my reading material, I bent to the task of finding a route from the Channel Tunnel exit to Ambleteuse in the Nord-Pas-de-Calais region of northern France – the settlement strongly associated with the PLUTO operation according to the website I’d looked at.

The atlas pre-dated the Channel Tunnel. Not good. I checked the sea for artist’s impressions of sea monsters. There were none. Better. I traced a route down the French coast on a highway unimaginatively named the D940. The drive from the rail terminal at Coquelles to Ambleteuse should take us less than an hour.

I was considering whether there might now be a quicker, more direct route when Jo appeared at the door rattling the handle. I glanced at my watch – eight minutes. Impressive.

As she slid under the steering wheel I caught a glimpse of sturdy footwear, worn jeans, an outdoor top and some enthusiasm for the day ahead. She’d sprayed something nice somewhere too. She dumped her bag on the back seat and gunned the engine.

‘Got any idea of where we’re going?’

‘Yes. Got your passport?’

She swore, killed the engine, pulled out the keys, jumped out of the vehicle and ran back to the entrance to her building.

I resisted the urge to mention it when she returned a couple of quick minutes later breathing heavily and looking flustered. She took her aggression out on the vehicle and I kept quiet. The way she was driving led me to believe we might not be late for the train after all if we didn’t end up becoming an RTA statistic.

We weren’t late but we cut it fine. The traffic had already started rolling to board by the time we pitched up. We went smoothly through the necessary checkpoints – maybe Jo flashed her warrant card – and were soon squeezed in our carriage sandwiched between a family saloon and a sports car. The tension that had tightened my body as we drove fast for the train faded away to be replaced by feelings of relief similar to that experienced when removing a tight pairs of shoes after a long walk.

I congratulated her.

She mistook my patronising remark for sarcasm. ‘We didn’t miss it, did we?’ It wasn’t worth fighting about.

I was interested so I asked: ‘What did you tell work?’

‘The truth, of course. I’m following up a lead pertinent to the investigation.’

‘In France?’

‘I don’t think I mentioned exactly where.’

‘What if they want you urgently?’

‘They won’t.’ She seemed quite sure about that.

‘How can you be so sure?’

‘It’s Saturday,’ she said, as if that explained everything.

*

The forty-minute train ride was uneventful. We discussed the route we should take. I showed her my suggestion in the atlas and she took it from me and made a meal of checking the publication date then made some clever remark about believing the UK had still been attached to mainland Europe when it was printed, but we had nothing better. Neither of us owned smartphones with international map applications.

We followed everyone else off the train and out of the gates of the Channel Tunnel terminal, if not on to French soil then French tarmac.

There wasn’t a signpost that tallied with the map so we went with the flow on the A16. A short while on I was worrying whether we were going in the right direction when I saw a sign for the D243E3. That was in my atlas. We took it while everyone else appeared to know something we didn’t. The atlas indicated that in five or six kilometres we would find the D940 somewhere near Sangatte.

I knew two things about Sangatte. One: it was twinned with Sandgate, just up the road from Dymchurch. Two: it was notorious around the turn of the twenty-first century as the site of a refugee camp from which its largely eastern European inmates would regularly walk away without difficulty in their individual bids to find a way across the Channel and into the UK – the promised land. So lax was security reputed to be at the camp that it earned the nick-name ‘Sans-gate’. Much to the relief of British immigration officials, the camp was closed in 2002.

We were heading towards the coast. Everything was labelled in kilometres. The D940 was about five away. I thought Romney Marsh was flat and featureless but the landscape we were driving through took open plains to a new... plane. The view put me in mind of the film,
‘The Big Country’
. At least the Marsh was regularly broken up with trees and hedges. In every direction the flat land rolled away to the horizon with only sporadic clusters of housing to interrupt the view. For all its blandness there was something typically French about it in an exciting continental way.

What we saw of Sangatte was tidy and well looked after. My guess was that the French government had been generous to the municipality in its compensation for foisting a refugee camp on them, which could not have been a popular development. The French, I supposed, had their own version of NIMBY and as a people they had a reputation for effective civil action when they could be bothered to unite or felt threatened.

We came to a T-junction and turned left. We were on the D940 in northern France and less than two hours previously I had been at home in southern England. Incredible.

We quickly progressed through the modern, functional, built up centre-ville and were once more travelling up the asphalt scars in the vast swathes of open farmland.

I got the idea enclosure hadn’t taken off in rural France like it had in eighteenth and nineteenth century England. Or maybe it had but the French peasants had claimed it all back in their Revolution. Good for them.

The scenery quickly became a stunning distraction as the sun blazed down on La Manche to our right and bathed the countryside to our left in its warm squeeze. I thought that once this was all over I’d return and explore this area more fully. It seemed as though it would be worth it.

The roads were as quiet as a Christmas morning in a home without children. We drove for several minutes without encountering another vehicle.

We passed through the small, sleepy, unremarkable yet typically French northern-provincial settlements of Wissant, Audinghen and Audresselles, and half an hour after leaving Coqu
elles arrived at Ambleteuse without a clue regarding what to do next. Everywhere was so peaceful it might have been a period of extended siesta or a public holiday.

***

42

Ambleteuse was the biggest of the villages we had encountered so far along this stretch of the extreme northern coast. There were people around, even some traffic, if three moving automobiles, a tractor and a bicycle constituted traffic.

It was likely we were going to have communication problems. My French was limited to asking someone their name, enquiring after their health and asking how old they were. Jo could manage a ‘Bonjour’ that even I found offensive. But we had a stroke of luck. Without warning we found ourselves driving past a large World War II museum. Really. Don’t believe me, Google it.

I told her to stop and, having overshot the entrance, she pulled into a lay-by a hundred metres further on. The main road was not busy but she still managed to almost get us killed as she executed her U-turn. She coloured the air with her language and gesticulated in the general direction of the French driver who had not seemed in the wrong to me. Thankfully, he appeared oblivious to it all. I needed an incident of French road rage like I needed a case of shingles.

The museum looked like a converted industrial building – low and sprawling and clad in that particular style of corrugated metal sheeting reserved for them. It seemed well maintained and clean. I counted five flagpoles on the front lawn but couldn’t spot the German flag. Behind the six-foot barbed-wire-topped mesh fence that hemmed it in, the grassed area fronting the road boasted jeeps, tanks, heavy artillery and a variety of complementary military hardware. It looked like a labour of love of someone living in the past. Wars had to be remembered but for the right reasons.

If the car park was anything to go by, it wasn’t going to be particularly crowded inside. I suppose Second World War war-tourists have their seasons just like fans of anything else.

We had our pick of several parking spaces near the main entrance. It was mid-afternoon. I checked the opening hours on the door. We had plenty of time to find out where the French end of the PLUTO operation had been sited. And if no one here knew then we were probably going to be screwed.

We went inside. It seemed only polite to buy a couple of tickets. I told Jo it was my treat. She gave me a look that didn’t say thanks very much.

The middle-aged woman in the little kiosk put her knitting aside to serve us. I asked whether there was anyone around who might
‘parlez-vous Anglais’
. I understood that either my syntax or semantics of the French language, possibly both, were flawed but she seemed to get the gist of what I was trying to say. In her linguistic ignorance Jo raised an impressed eyebrow at my efforts. I winked at her and didn’t see the need to put her straight. The woman nodded and waved us through towards the exhibits.

In we went. There were several static displays of crudely-posed manikins clad in military uniforms of both sides from the period being commemorated. Behind the glass of cabinets were exhibits of weapons and ephemera. I couldn’t get excited about this kind of thing myself. Sure, it was interesting; it was history, but it never bit me like it did some. Each to their own. Probably not too many people who came through the door would get gooey about a British first edition, first impression of Fahrenheit 451. Sober and without gloves, I’d strangle a puppy for one.

There didn’t seem to be anyone else around who looked like they worked there, so we just mooched and waited.

I was starting to wonder whether the knitter might not have understood my request after all when out of the corner of my eye I noticed a man with a purposeful stride approaching us. I turned to face him. He was about my height and about my weight. He had a small moustache and big ears that stood out all the more for his close-cropped hair. If I had ears like that I’d have worn my hair long, or a wide-brimmed hat.

He was dressed in overalls and he was wiping his hands on a rag. He looked like a mechanic but when he spoke he sounded better educated than that. His English was very good, just a trace of an accent.

‘You are looking for an English speaker?’ His demeanour suggested he was a busy man. His brow was furrowed and his gaze was quite intense.

I smiled and nodded confirmation. ‘Thank you. Sorry to drag you away from whatever you’re working on.’

‘How can I help you?’

‘We’re looking for something to do with the Second World War.’ He nodded his encouragement and I realised that given our surroundings he might have reasonably surmised as much. He showed no outward sign of thawing. ‘Have you ever heard of something called PLUTO?’

Something slight happened to his face; something I see in people’s faces when I swear at them and mean it. He forced himself to smile a tight little smile.

‘Why are you asking about that?’

I thought that a strange response. ‘You know what it was?’

‘Of course.’

‘We’re trying to find out the whereabouts of the operation in Ambleteuse. Where the pipeline would have come ashore. A building or something.’

He rephrased his question: ‘May I ask why it interests you?’

I decided to lie to him. It seemed the easiest thing to do. ‘I recently found out that my grandfather was involved in the Dungeness side of things. He was stationed in one of the pumping stations there. I’m interested to see what things were like on the French side.’ My lie pleased me. I didn’t look to see what it had done for Jo.

‘Then I’m afraid you’ve had a wasted journey.’

‘How do you mean?’

‘There was no similar arrangement on this side of La Manche.’

I gave him my confused look. ‘I don’t understand.’

‘It is very simple. When the Allies laid the pipelines this area of France was under Allied control, of course. They would hardly have been likely to go to all that trouble and danger if the Germans had still been here, would they? They wouldn’t have got near the beach. So they didn’t need the specially-constructed kinds of buildings that were erected in England to fool the Luftwaffe. When the pipelines reached the French shore they were simply laid across the beaches to pump their contents into waiting tankers and temporary storage containers.’