Jackdaws (17 page)

Paul looked at her with a touch of
amusement. She was no more than average height, and wiry, but she had big hands
and muscular legs. He could imagine her flattening a London policeman.

Flick asked, "What happened
next?"

"His two mates came around the
corner, and I was a bit slow to leave, on account of the brandy, so they gave
me a kicking and took me down the nick." Seeing Paul's frown of
incomprehension, she added: "The police station, that is. Anyway, the
first copper was ashamed to do me for assault, didn't want to admit he'd been
floored by a girl, so I got fourteen days for drunk and disorderly."

"And then you got into another
fight."

She gave Flick an appraising look.
"I don't know if I can explain to someone of your sort what it's like in here.
Half the girls are mad, and they've all got weapons. You can file the edge of a
spoon to make a blade, or sharpen the end of a bit of wire for a stiletto, or
twist threads together for a garotte. And the warders never intervene in a
fight between convicts. They like to watch us tear each other apart. That's why
so many of the inmates have scars."

Paul was shocked. He had never had
contact with people in jail. The picture painted by Ruby was horrifying.
Perhaps she was exaggerating, but she seemed quietly sincere. She did not
appear to care whether she was believed or not but recited the facts in the
dry, unhurried manner of someone who is not greatly interested but has nothing
better to do.

Flick said, "What happened with
the woman you killed?"

"She stole something of
mine."

"What?"

"A cake of soap."

My God, thought Paul. She killed her
for a piece of soap.

Flick said, "What did you
do?"

"I took it back."

"And then?"

"She went for me. She had a
chair leg that she'd made into a club with a bit of plumber's lead fixed to the
business end. She hit me over the head with it. I thought she was going to kill
me. But I had a knife. I'd found a long, pointed sliver of glass, like a shard
from a broken window pane, and I wrapped the broad end in a length of worn-out
bicycle tire for a handle. I stuck it in her throat. So she didn't get to hit
me a second time."

Flick suppressed a shudder and said,
"It sounds like self-defense."

"No. You've got to prove you
couldn't possibly have run away. And I'd premeditated the murder by making a
knife out of a piece of glass."

Paul stood up. "Wait here with
the guard for a moment, please," he said to Ruby. "We'll just step
outside."

Ruby smiled at him, and for the
first time she looked not quite pretty but pleasant. "You're so
polite," she said appreciatively.

In the corridor, Paul said,
"What a dreadful story!"

"Remember, everyone in here
says they're innocent," Flick said guardedly.

"All the same, I think she might
be more sinned against than sinning."

"I doubt it. I think she's a
killer."

"So we reject her."

"On the contrary," said
Flick. "She's exactly what I want."

They went back into the room. Flick
said to Ruby, "If you could get out of here, would you be willing to do
dangerous war work?"

She responded with another question.
"Would we be going to France?"

Flick raised her eyebrows.
"What leads you to ask that?"

"You spoke French to me at the
start. I assume you were checking if I speak the language."

"Well, I can't tell you much
about the job."

"I bet it involves sabotage
behind enemy lines."

Paul was startled: Ruby was very
quick on the uptake. Seeing his surprise, Ruby went on, "Look, at first I
thought you might want me to do a bit of translation for you, but there's
nothing dangerous about that. So we must be going to France. And what would the
British Army do there except blow up bridges and railway lines?"

Paul said nothing, but he was
impressed by her powers of deduction.

Ruby frowned. "What I can't
figure out is why it's an all-woman team."

Flick's eyes widened. "What
makes you think that?"

"If you could use men, why
would you be talking to me? You must be desperate. It can't be that easy to get
a murderess out of jail, even for vital war work. So what's special about me?
I'm tough, but there must be hundreds of tough men who speak perfect French and
would be gung-ho for a bit of cloak-and-dagger stuff. The only reason for
picking me rather than one of them is that I'm female. Perhaps women are less
likely to be questioned by the Gestapo… is that it?"

"I can't say," Flick said.

"Well, if you want me, I'll do
it. Can I have another one of those cigarettes?"

"Sure," said Paul.

Flick said, "You do understand
that the job is dangerous."

"Yeah," said Ruby,
lighting a Lucky Strike. "But not as dangerous as being in this fucking
prison."

THEY RETURNED TO the assistant
governor's office after leaving Ruby. "I need your help, Miss Lindleigh,"
Paul said, once again flattering her. "Tell me what you would need in
order to be able to release Ruby Romain."

"Release her! But she's a
murderer! Why would she be released?"

"I'm afraid I can't tell you.
But I can assure you that if you knew where she was going, you wouldn't think
she'd had a lucky escape—quite the contrary."

"I see," she said, not
entirely mollified.

"I must have her out of here
tonight," Paul went on. "But I don't want to put you in any kind of
awkward position. That's why I need to know exactly what authorization you
require." What he really wanted was to make sure she would have no excuse
to be obstructive.

"I can't release her under any
circumstances," said Miss Lindleigh. "She has been remanded here by a
magistrate's court, so only the court can free her."

Paul was patient. "And what do
you think that would require?"

"She would have to be taken, in
police custody, before a magistrate. The public prosecutor, or his
representative, would have to tell the magistrate that all charges against
Romain had been dropped. Then the magistrate would be obliged to say she was
free to go."

Paul frowned, looking ahead for
snags. "She would have to sign her army joining-up papers before seeing
the magistrate, so that she would be under military discipline as soon as the
court released her… otherwise she might just walk away."

Miss Lindleigh was still
incredulous. "Why would they drop the charges?"

"This prosecutor is a
government official?"

"Yes."

"Then it won't be a
problem." Paul stood up. "I will be back here later this evening,
with a magistrate, someone from the prosecutor's department, and an army driver
to take Ruby to… her next port of call. Can you foresee any snags?"

Miss Lindleigh shook her head.
"I follow orders, Major, just as you do."

"Good."

They took their leave. When they got
outside, Paul stopped and looked back. "I've never been to a prison
before," he said. "I don't know what I expected, but it wasn't
something out of a fairy tale."

He was making an inconsequential
remark about the building, but Flick looked sour. "Several women have been
hanged here," she said. "Not much of a fairy tale."

He wondered why she was grumpy.
"I guess you identify with the prisoners," he said. Suddenly he
realized why. "It's because you might end up in a jail in France."

She looked taken aback. "I
think you're right," she said. "I didn't know why I hated that place
so much, but that's it."

She might be hanged, too, he
realized, but he kept that thought to himself.

They walked away, heading for the
nearest Tube station. Flick was thoughtful. "You're very perceptive,"
she said. "You understood how to keep Miss Lindleigh on our side. I would
have made an enemy of her."

"No point in that."

"Exactly. And you turned Ruby
from a tigress into a pussycat."

"I wouldn't want a woman like
that to dislike me."

Flick laughed. "Then you told
me something that I hadn't figured out about myself."

Paul was pleased that he had
impressed her, but he was already looking ahead to the next problem. "By
midnight, we should have half a team at the training center in Hampshire."

"We call it the Finishing
School," Flick said. "Yes:

Diana Colefield, Maude Valentine,
and Ruby Romain." Paul nodded grimly. "An undisciplined aristocrat, a
pretty flirt who can't tell fantasy from reality, and a murdering gypsy with a
short temper." When he thought of the possibility that Flick could be
hanged by the Gestapo, he felt as worried as Percy about the caliber of the
recruits.

"Beggars can't be
choosers," Flick said cheerfully. Her sour mood had vanished.

"But we still don't have an
explosives expert or a telephone engineer."

Flick glanced at her wrist.
"It's still only four pip emma. And maybe the RAF has taught Denise Bowyer
how to blow up a telephone exchange."

Paul grinned. Flick's optimism was
irresistible.

They reached the station and caught
a train. They could not talk about the mission because there were other passengers
within earshot. Paul said, "I learned a little about Percy this morning.
We drove through the neighborhood where he was brought up."

"He's adopted the manners and
even the accent of the British upper class, but don't be fooled. Under that old
tweed jacket beats the heart of a real street brawler."

"He told me he was flogged at
school for speaking with a low-class accent."

"He was a scholarship boy. They
generally have a hard time in swanky British schools. I know, I was a
scholarship girl."

"Did you have to change your
accent?"

"No. I grew up in an earl's
household. I always spoke like this."

Paul guessed that was why Flick and
Percy got on so well: they were both lower-class people who had climbed the
social ladder. Unlike Americans, the British thought there was nothing wrong
with class prejudice. Yet they were shocked at Southerners who told them
Negroes were inferior. "I think Percy's very fond of you," Paul said.

"I love him like a
father."

The sentiment seemed genuine, Paul
thought, but she was also firmly setting him straight about her relationship
with Percy.

Flick had arranged to meet Percy
back at Orchard Court. When they arrived, there was a car outside the building.
Paul recognized the driver, one of Monty's entourage. "Sir, there's
someone in the car waiting for you," the man said.

The back door opened and out stepped
Paul's younger sister, Caroline. He grinned with delight. "Well, I'll be
damned!" he said. She stepped into his arms and he hugged her. "What
are you doing in London?"

"I can't say, but I have a
couple of hours off, and I persuaded Monty's office to lend me a car to come
and see you. Want to buy me a drink?"

"I don't have a minute to
spare," he said. "Not even for you. But you can drive me to
Whitehall. I have to find a man called a public prosecutor."

"Then I'll take you there, and
we'll catch up in the car."

"Of course," he said.
"Let's go!"

CHAPTER

FOURTEEN

FLICK TURNED AT the building door
and saw a pretty girl wearing the uniform of an American lieutenant step out of
the car and throw her arms around Paul. She noted the delighted smile on his
face and the force of his hug. This was obviously his wife, girlfriend, or
fiancé, probably making an unexpected visit to London. She must be with the
U.S. forces in Britain, preparing for the invasion. Paul jumped into her car.

Flick went into Orchard Court,
feeling a little sad. Paul had a girl, they were nuts about one another, and
they had been granted a surprise meeting. Flick wished Michel could show up
just like that, out of the blue. But he was lying wounded on a couch in Reims
with a shameless nineteen-year-old beauty nursing him.

Percy was already back from Hendon.
She found him making tea. "How was your RAF girl?" she asked.

"Lady Denise Bowyer—she's on
her way to the Finishing School," he said.

"Wonderful! Now we have
four!"

"But I'm worried. She's a
braggart. She boasted about the work she's doing in the Air Force, told me all
sorts of details she should have kept quiet about. You'll have to see what you
think of her in training."

"I don't suppose she knows
anything about telephone exchanges."

"Not a thing. Nor explosives.
Tea?"

"Please."

He handed her a cup and sat behind
the cheap old desk. "Where's Paul?"

"Gone to find the public
prosecutor. He's hoping to get Ruby Romain out of jail this evening."

Percy gave her a quizzical glance.
"Do you like him?"

"More than I did
initially."

"Me too."

Flick smiled. "He charmed the
socks off the old battleaxe running the prison."

"How was Ruby Romain?"

"Terrifying. She slit the
throat of another inmate in a quarrel over a bar of soap."

"Jesus." Percy shook his
head in incredulity. "What the hell kind of a team are we putting
together, Flick?"

"Dangerous. Which is what it's
supposed to be. That's not the problem. Besides, the way things are going, we
may have the luxury of eliminating the least satisfactory one or two during
training. My worry is that we don't have the experts we need. There's no point
taking a team of tough girls into France, then destroying the wrong
cables."

Percy drained his teacup and began
to fill his pipe. "I know a woman explosives expert who speaks
French."

Flick was surprised. "But this
is great! Why didn't you say so before?"

"When I first thought of her, I
dismissed her out of hand. She's not at all suitable. But I hadn't realized how
desperate we'd be."