Farthing (21 page)

Kahn and an underground Jewish group. But Guerin wasn’t Jewish, he was a Bolshevik, and the Bolsheviks hated the Jews almost as much as the Nazis did. “Are they signed?”

“They’re signed Chaim, though I don’t know if that’s how you say it,” Stebbings said, pronouncing the name like chain

—“C-H-A-I-M.”

“All of them?” Carmichael rescued the pen and wrote the name down.

“All of them. Same hand, too. No addresses on them, though they are dated.”

“What are the dates?”

“Over the last eight months, which would be since Kahn moved into this flat, on the occasion of his marriage. If there were earlier ones, we didn’t find them. The most recent one is dated last Tuesday, May third.”

“On May third they were urging him to blow up the Farthing Set with a bomb,” Carmichael said, smelling his lady-sawn-in-half again. “And on Saturday night he kills Thirkie, alone, by gas?

How often were the letters sent, normally?”

“About once a month, or every six weeks,” Stebbings said.

“Thank you very much, sergeant,” Carmichael said. “I don’t suppose you have any idea who this person is?”

“None, sorry, sir. I checked the name, but we don’t have anything, and it’s just the one name, don’t know if it’s a first or a last name.”

“No known Bolshevik connections?”

“No, sir.” Stebbings sounded regretful.

“Does he sound like a Bolshevik, in the letters?”

“Rather the opposite, if anything. He says several times that Stalin’s as bad as Hitler. He talks a lot about smuggling people out of the Reich and says that Stalin’s copying Hitler and they’ll have to smuggle people out of Russia soon too.”

“A Jewish underground group,” Carmichael said. “Do we know of any?”

“One or two, which we’ll check out now,” Stebbings said. “They mostly want to establish a Jewish state

in Palestine.”

“That isn’t illegal,” Carmichael objected. “Perfectly respectable people want to do that. Balfour when he was Prime Minister wanted to.”

“You know more about that than I would, sir,” Stebbings said. “I was talking about people who go out to Palestine and blow up railway lines or shoot at soldiers, terrorist actions like that.”

“Ah. That’s a red herring from the sound of things. What I was wondering from the content as described was whether these letters might have come from the Continent. Are they in envelopes?

Did they come from England or across the Channel?”

“No envelopes, so no telling,” Stebbings said. “The notepaper is cheap, but it doesn’t look foreign. You should look at them yourself, sir. Should I send them down?”

“I think I’ll be back in London later today—hold on to them for now,” Carmichael said. “I’ll be in touch, sergeant. Thank you again.”

“One more thing,” Stebbings said. “It turns out he may be a sodomite too, Kahn. There’s letters in Mrs.

Kahn’s possession from her brother, who was in the RAF with Kahn, talking about their undying love, and David and Jonathan, and all manner of Greeks.”

“Probably just boyish stuff and nonsense,” Carmichael said. “From Mrs. Kahn’s brother you say?”

“They’re everywhere, sir,” Stebbings said, gloomily.

“Well, this doesn’t have any bearing on the present case, being as Mrs. Kahn’s brother was killed in

1940,” Carmichael said. “Put the whole lot on my desk. I’ll go through them when I can.”

“See you later, sir,” Stebbings said, and rang off.

Carmichael turned his pen in his hands, then wiped his fingers on his handkerchief. He looked at what he had written, but it didn’t apply. Kahn, however Jewish, however queer as a young man, was rich, had been rich before his marriage, he came of a rich banking family. He had a friend who was a Jewish revolutionary, a friend he sent money to, a friend smuggling Jews out of the Reich, a friend who urged him to violent acts. Was that enough to arrest him for the murder of Sir James Thirkie? Surely not. But could he risk letting him loose, when he had letters in his possession urging him to kill a man who had been killed, and at a time when he had the means and the opportunity? If he arrested Kahn, Kahn would hang.

He would be convicted in the press before he ever got to trial, and a prosecuting barrister would look at

Carmichael’s thin thread of evidence and paint it as broad as a highway. Then Kahn would hang, and if he wasn’t guilty, the guilty person would be laughing. But Kahn could have done it, have decided not to kill his own relations-by-marriage but satisfy his friend with Thirkie, who had stopped the Jewish war.

He reached out for the bell-pull, to ask Jeffrey to send Kahn in, and hesitated. Not Bolshevik, Stebbings had said, rather the opposite. Guerin/Brown had that Bolshevik card. If this was a political plot, then it was a Bolshevik one. Guerin/Brown could have been unconnected with the Thirkie murder, but he couldn’t quite believe it. Carmichael ground his fists into his eyes, feeling as if he had everything upside-down. He rang the bell, and waited. He read the report on the Bolsheviks. It said nothing about

Jews.

Jeffrey knocked. “You rang, sir?” he asked.

“Please ask Mr. Kahn if he can see me,” Carmichael said. “And send in some China tea for us both, if it isn’t putting too much of a strain on the kitchen at this time of day.”

“Yes, sir,” Jeffrey said. “Is it true, sir, that everyone is allowed to leave after breakfast? The London servants are all in a flurry about it.”

“Yes, most people will be leaving,” Carmichael said. “There’s no reason to keep everyone here any longer.”

Jeffrey left. Carmichael put down the Bolshevik report—why did they have to have so many antagonistic splinter groups anyway? Most people got on splendidly without any. Underneath it was a brief report on

Alan Brown, tenant of 23 Sisal Villas, Bethnal Green. Date of Birth, 6 February 1925.

Unemployed.

Last place of employment: Mottrams. Position: fitter. Reason for leaving employment: dismissed 3

January 1949, accused of trying to start a union. Not known to the police.

So he’d been out of work since January, and he sounded like a red, all right, trying to start a union. But if his real name wasn’t known to the police either, why was he living under the name of Brown? Faked identity cards didn’t come cheap.

Lizzie brought tea, and Carmichael poured a cup for himself. Then Jeffrey tapped on the door again, and ushered in Kahn. He was wearing a light gray traveling suit and carrying a slate gray coat.

“My wife and I are ready to leave,” Kahn said.

“Sit down, and have a cup of tea,” Carmichael said, pouring a cup and pushing it across the desk. He waited until Kahn was sitting. “Who’s Chaim?” he asked.

Kahn betrayed absolutely nothing. The cup did not tremble in the saucer. “I have no idea what you’re talking about,” he said.

Carmichael took the pad where he had written it down, noticed in time what was written above it, turned to a clean page and wrote it down again. He handed it to Kahn. This time there was a reaction—he saw him flinch a little, and his teaspoon tinkled.

“Chaim,” he read, pronouncing it more like “Kiyam.” He looked up from the paper, distress visible.

“Where did you find this name?”

“Who is it?” Carmichael insisted.

“He is a friend of mine, a hot-headed Jewish friend,” he said, setting his cup down on the desk.

“You’ve found his letters? You’ve searched my flat?”

Carmichael said nothing for a moment. It wasn’t the answer he was expecting. He had expected more absolute denial, which would have been very hard to deal with. “What’s his full name?” he asked.

Kahn opened his mouth, then closed it again. “I don’t have to speak to you, Inspector, and I certainly don’t have to betray my friends to you when that would mean betraying them to the Gestapo and having them end up in a worse place than you could ever imagine.”

“I’ve seen the reports on the work camps,” Carmichael said.

“The press know nothing—” Kahn began dismissively.

“I’ve seen the real reports,” Carmichael interrupted. “Your friend Chaim gets people out of them?”

Kahn stared at him for a moment, then spoke. “Yes. When he can. More often he helps people escape before they get to them— false papers so they can live as Aryans, passports or visas so they can get

out.”

“And you give him money, to help him with this?”

Kahn nodded. “Not very much money, not enough, but how can I refuse?”

“The Gestapo are always telling us that our rich Jews are financing the escape of their Jews,”

Carmichael said.

Kahn laughed without mirth. “I hope you deny it.”

“I always have so far,” Carmichael said, evenly.

“I don’t have to say anything without a lawyer present,” Kahn said, immediately defensive.

“When it’s a matter of helping you catch a murderer, a murderer I know nothing about, then I will help you as much as

I can, even though I see suspicion falling falsely on me simply because I’m Jewish. But when it comes to this kind of thing, you can’t make me talk.”

“We can go that route if you like, Mr. Kahn, but I have to tell you that if you make such a request, I’ll be forced to arrest you, and once the machinery of arrests begins to grind, you might find yourself very rapidly on the gallows for the murder of Sir James Thirkie. I don’t want that, because I’m by no means sure you did it, but from the evidence we have against you it would be possible to make a very good case.”

Kahn picked up his tea and took a sip, and then another. “What do you want to know?” he asked.

“As well as helping European Jews escape the Reich, Chaim urged you to revolutionary actions in this country?” Carmichael asked, quite gently.

“You have searched my flat,” Kahn said, putting his tea down again. “Very well. Yes. Yes he did. He was always coming up with some scheme. He thought that since my marriage brought me into contact with people he called British fascists, I should take some violent action against them.”

“And what did you think?”

“That he was talking nonsense, of course!” Kahn said, vehemently. “The Farthing Set aren’t fascists;

there are no fascists in Britain. I hoped that Lord Eversley and his friends might learn from this connection that British Jews are much like other British people, and perhaps agree to allowing more European Jews into the country, or into other parts of the Empire. If I’d killed them, even one of the out-and-out anti-Semites, I’d have made everyone hate the Jews. Britain might have become as bad as Germany. It was madness. It could only make things worse here, to no purpose.”

“And is that what you said to Chaim?”

“Of course it is, over and over again. Every time he wrote I’d send him back a long letter explaining all this business. He didn’t understand the British situation. He saw that things here aren’t perfect, and thought half a loaf was the same as no bread, which is arrant nonsense. My father manages to get a number of visas every year, entirely legally, by money and influence, not very many, true, but for each individual life saved it makes all the difference in the world. We can’t help European Jewry by using the methods of fascism. It’s much more likely that we can change public opinion and policy, slowly.”

“And is the hope of being in a better position to do that why you married Mrs. Kahn?”

Carmichael asked.

Kahn looked at him as if he were a worm. “In your world, do people marry for political reasons like that?” he asked. “I married Lucy because we love each other.”

“As you loved her brother?”

“You really are despicable,” Kahn said.

“I’m sorry,” Carmichael said, sincerely. “Let’s leave all of that on one side. These political views you just expressed, are they the views you expressed to Chaim?”

“Over and over again,” Kahn repeated.

“But we don’t have your letters,” Carmichael pointed out. “And you continued to send money.”

“He’s doing good work in Europe,” Kahn protested. “He didn’t understand the British situation, but I

approved of what he was doing there. Last year he managed to get a hundred people out of a death camp at Stavrapol, in the Reichskomis-sariat of Ukraine, and right across Europe to Portugal and then to

Brazil.”

“How do you know Chaim?” Carmichael asked. “Where did you meet?

“We were at school together.” Surprisingly, Kahn blushed. “I was educated abroad,” he said, airily.

“Between 1929 and 1937 I was at a private school in St. Tropez called Aquitaine College. It was run along the lines of a British public school, and education was in English, but it was in the South of France.”

“Why was that?” Carmichael asked, making a note. Chaim was a sufficiently unusual name that it would be unlikely to be too hard to trace him from a clue like that.

“It’s difficult for Jewish boys to have public school educations in England,” Kahn admitted.

“There are quotas. Aquitaine College was an attempt to provide an English kind of education, in pleasant surroundings.”

“Were many of the pupils Jewish?” Carmichael asked.

“Practically all of them,” Kahn admitted. “Not all of them were English, however.”

“So Chaim is an old friend. You argue like old friends. He suggests you do ridiculous things, you tell him he’s full of nonsense, but you send him money to help him do things you do approve of.”

“He’s never been an adult in a country that was free,” Kahn explained. “He doesn’t understand England, because all he knew of it was at school, and at school in France. If England were the way the Continent is, then he’d be right. Killing Hitler, if it were possible to get close enough to him, would be a duty, and might even make a difference. He thinks killing my father-in-law would be the same thing, because he doesn’t understand the situation.”

“Is he a Communist?” Carmichael asked, slipping the question in idly.

“Good gracious no!” Kahn looked astonished. “He hates Stalin almost as much as he hates Hitler.”

Carmichael picked up his tea, which was almost cold, and drained it in one draught. He looked at Kahn, and decided to take the risk. “I’m not going to arrest you, Mr. Kahn,” he said. “But I am going to have to ask you to do me an immense favor, because otherwise I will have to arrest you. Promise me you’ll stay here, in Farthing, and consider yourself under house arrest. I don’t think I could persuade my superiors, in the circumstances, to let you loose in London. But if you stay here, in your parents-in-law’s