Stratton's War

Read Stratton's War Online

Authors: Laura Wilson

 
 
 
 
Stratton's War
 
 
LAURA WILSON
 
 
Orion
 
An Orion paperback
 
First published in Great Britain in 2008
by Orion
This paperback edition published in 2009
by Orion Books Ltd,
Orion House, 5 Upper St Martin’s Lane,
London WC2H 9EA
 
 
An Hachette UK company
 
 
1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2
 
Copyright © Laura Wilson 2008
 
 
The right of Laura Wilson to be identified as the author
of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with
the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
 
 
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be
reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted,
in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical,
photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior
permission of the copyright owner.
 
 
All the characters in this book are fictitious, and any resemblance
to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
 
 
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available
from the British Library.
 
eISBN : 978 1 4091 1557 1
 
 
Printed in Great Britain by
Clays Ltd, St Ives plc
 
 
The Orion Publishing Group’s policy is to use papers that
are natural, renewable and recyclable products and
made from wood grown in sustainable forests. The logging
and manufacturing processes are expected to conform to
the environmental regulations of the country of origin.
 
 
 
 
 
Laura Wilson’s acclaimed and award-winning crime novels have won her many fans. Her first novel,
A Little Death
, was shortlisted for both the Ellis Peters and the Anthony Award for Best Paperback Original.
The Lover
won the 2004
Prix du Polar Européen
for Best Crime Novel of the Year in Translation and was also shortlisted for the CWA Gold Dagger and the Ellis Peters Award in the same year. Her most recent novel,
A Thousand Lies
, was shortlisted for the CWA Duncan Lawrie Dagger. Laura lives in Islington, London.
Praise for
Stratton’s War
‘Laura Wilson’s earlier novel
The Lover
, set in wartime London, was rightly praised for its evocation of place and period, and she is equally successful with
Stratton’s War
. This is not simply a question of period detail . . . it is deep in the language of the novel, in the speech of the characters, even in the narrative voice. Everything sounds authentic’
Times Literary Supplement
 
‘
Stratton’s War
is a hugely atmospheric wartime thriller. If you like Robert Goddard, you’ll love Laura Wilson’
Simon Kernick
 
‘Laura Wilson’s most ambitious book . . . the city’s wartime atmosphere is impeccably created’
Sunday Telegraph
 
‘Big, fat tale of Home Front shenanigans . . . Laura Wilson is just as concerned with depicting London in the Blitz - which she does with impressive, impressionistic detail - as with providing a juicy mystery’
Evening Standard
 
‘This is easily Wilson’s best book yet - which is setting the bar terrifyingly high. Her work is consistently thoughtful, engaging literature, and totally absorbing, and this easily hits all of those marks. Always, she writes of recent history in a way that feels entirely real. This is a real gem of a book, one that casts its glamour over life long after you’ve finished reading. Thoroughly recommended’
Manda Scott
 
‘This enjoyable, intelligent book is based part on fact. The Right Club existed; so did the spymasters and agents that inspired [the] characters’
Economist
 
‘Laura Wilson specialises in acutely observed psychological thrillers . . . This promises to be an exceptional series . . . highly recommended’
Spectator
 
‘Not only an outstanding crime story, but a wonderful historical novel’
Birmingham Post
Table of Contents
 
 
ONE
A child saw her first.
June 1940, Fitzrovia: five o’clock, and the sky overcast. The boy, six years old, had been running half-heartedly up and down the empty street, pretending to be an aeroplane, but it wasn’t much good without the others. He’d been delighted when his mother came to take him away from the farm, with its pig-faced owner and the huge smelly animals that still chased him, snorting and steaming, through nightmares. His mother, smothering for the first few days, had soon tired of him under her feet and turned him outdoors to play, and three months on, with most of his friends still evacuated and his old school requisitioned by the ARP, he was bored.
He picked up a stick and ran it up and down the iron railings in front of the tall houses, then turned the corner and, sighing, sat down on the kerb and pulled both his socks up, hard.
Raising his head, he saw a sack of something draped over a set of railings further down. It hadn’t been there when he’d run down the road after his dinner, he was sure. He dawdled along for a closer look. It wasn’t a sack, but a woman, impaled on the sharp black spikes. He stared at her, uncomprehending. Face down, her dress was caught up round her waist, and he could see her drawers. He extended a finger and poked her shoulder. Under the slippery material, she felt scraggy and bony, like the meat his mother sent him to fetch from the butcher’s. She seemed to have two lots of hair, one short, brown and stiff looking, on the back of her head, and the other, longer and yellow. This top hair had slipped forwards, hanging down on either side of her face so that he couldn’t see what she looked like. He considered this for a moment, then looked down at the pavement, where a number of little round white things were scattered. He picked one up and rolled it between his fingers - hard and shiny. A sweet? He put it in his mouth, sucking first, then testing it against his teeth. It felt slightly rough when he bit it, but tasted of nothing. Spitting it into his palm, he squatted down and peered up at the face between the long yellow curls.
In shadow, upside down, one eye stared back at him. The other was closed - a long, lashless slit like a wound, its outer corner pulled upwards, as if by invisible thread. Then, with a groan, the mouth opened, a black, cavernous O, to swallow him whole.
He screamed. Someone else screamed, too, and for a moment he thought it must be the woman, bent on eating him alive. Then feet pounded towards him, and in a confusion of shouts, gasps and police whistles, an unknown hand pressed his head to an alien bosom. Howling and thrashing in terror, he was carried away down the road, pounding at his rescuer, the single pearl still clutched in his left fist.
TWO
The barrage balloons were shining in the evening sun. DI Ted Stratton squinted up at them. He felt, as he always did, comforted by their rotund, silvery serenity. Despite everything, he thought - first Norway and Denmark, then Holland, Belgium, and now France, like dominoes - it was hardly a picture of a country at war. For Stratton, the word conjured up bullet-riddled scarecrows sprawled across the wire in No Man’s land, even though the Great War had ended too soon for him to be called up, leaving him unable to tell whether he was glad or sorry. That had been his brothers’ war; the eldest had died. It had come as a shock to realise that, at thirty-five, and in a reserved occupation, he’d be too old for this war - for the time being, at least. He was fit enough, strong and muscular, but he certainly looked his age; a broken nose and a great deal of night duty had given him a battered, serviceable appearance. In a way, thought Stratton, this war’s everybody’s, even the nippers’. Terrible that it should have come to this, but exciting, that sense of something happening, of being poised in history, alone, at the very centre of the map, of the world tilting on its axis: shall we be next?
As he passed the sandbags at the hospital entrance, Stratton thought of the rumours he’d heard about the local authorities stockpiling thousands of papier-mâché coffins, and thought: soon.
Middlesex Hospital, emptied the previous September of most of its patients to make room for as yet non-existent air-raid casualties, was still quiet. Stratton’s footsteps echoed on the stone stairs as he descended to Dr Byrne’s underworld - the mortuary, lavatory-tiled, harshly lit and smelling of decay and chemicals. The pathologist was seated at his desk, writing notes. ‘Is this an official visit?’

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