Authors: Robert Ryan
‘A compromised dentist.’
And perhaps a dead British policeman as well,
she thought,
under the wheels of his own car.
It was quite a tally she was clocking up. ‘And I did what I had to do. As an agent of Germany.’
‘Forgive me, but I have no way of knowing that. You could be an agent of the British Crown.’
‘And so could you.’
‘I am, my dear. A very senior agent of the Crown. I am the Chief Postal Censor for the north-west of England. I see all the sensitive material written in Liverpool, Manchester and beyond. And I act on those pieces of information that might be of benefit to Germany and the Kaiser.’
She laughed. If that was true, it was a remarkable placement. ‘Why are you telling me this?’
‘Oh, because if you are who I think you are, then you might be useful to me. If not, you’ll leave this room in that bag of yours.’ He glanced down at it, and she shuddered.
A mournful horn sounded somewhere nearby and received an answer to its call. They were close to the river. Easy to dispose of a body, whole or otherwise.
‘I am an operative of the
Nachrichten-Abteilung,
German Naval Intelligence,’ she said. ‘My last assignment was to guide a Zeppelin over Thetford aerodrome. Unfortunately, another agent, operating in the area, was recognized as a spy and compromised my position. I was in Great Yarmouth with Delaney. When I left, I realized he was being observed by British agents or police.’
‘How did you escape?’
‘I . . .’
‘Careful now. I am not stupid. I have some facts to draw upon.’
This could have been a bluff, but she stuck as closely to the facts as she could. ‘I shot Delaney when I realized he was under observation by the British.’ It was only a small lie, a transposition of timing. ‘He would have been no further use and could have betrayed both me and you—’
The man put his hand up. ‘I am not judging. Probably very wise.’
‘I managed to lose the British agent and then stole his car.’
He looked impressed. ‘Most resourceful.’
‘Which I spent the night in, in a country lane. I then abandoned it and took several trains to Liverpool.’
The man tapped his lower lip with an index finger. ‘I am afraid I shall have to verify some of that. Can you give me the name of your handler at Naval Intelligence?’
She pursed her lips. What did he take her for? She had said too much already. ‘I can. But I won’t.’
He smirked. ‘Hersch has a weakness for
femmes fatales.’
This man doesn’t know the half of it,
she thought.
‘I shall check with him. Is there anything that would confirm your identity?’
They locked eyes for what seemed like many minutes before she said, ‘Tell him that he shouldn’t make love with Rudy in the room. It is very distracting.’
‘Rudy?’
‘His schnauzer. He barks at the most inopportune moments.’
The man nodded, vaguely affronted by such candour. What sort of training was seducing your agents? Or perhaps it was the other way round. ‘You really are quite a remarkable women. I shall try to get confirmation as soon as possible. In the meantime . . .’ He looked around and wrinkled his nose. ‘Try and make yourself comfortable. Is there anything I can bring you?’
She was distracted by something at the window that had caught her eye. ‘I’m sorry?’
‘Can I bring you something?’
‘I haven’t eaten anything for quite some time.’
‘I’ll see if we can send something up.’
‘Thank you.’
As soon as he was gone, she got to work on the window.
Watson sat on a bench in the walled garden, letting the low evening sun warm his face. He just wished it could heat up his bones, which seemed permanently chilled. He ached all over. The strain of his few days at Elveden had taken its toll: the freezing water, the hellhole of a tank and the suicide of a young man right in front of him –
a man who
had intended to feed him a poison to drive him mad, and thus further confuse the situation,
he reminded himself. Thank goodness he made sure the engineer had not been allowed unaccompanied access to the other two machines, or he might have poisoned those too.
Watson could hear the noise of the landships, blowing across from the trench system, their Daimler engines revving and protesting and sometimes juddering to a halt. Coughs and splutters marked desperate attempts to restart them. But it wasn’t his concern now. He was sure there would be no more madness among the crew, well, not of that sort. The terrible conditions would afflict those in the belly of that beast in other ways, though. He was still going to file that report on conditions inside the tanks from a medical perspective.
‘What are you thinking?’
He looked up at Mrs Gregson, who handed him a tall glass of something that looked like a urine sample. ‘What’s this?’
‘Medicine. For your nerves. Don’t ask questions.’
He sipped. It was a whisky with ginger. It made his insides glow. ‘Thank you, Nurse,’ he said.
‘May I?’
He shuffled along and she sat next to him. She placed a hand over his, as hot as an iron, it seemed to him. He hesitated for a moment before he put down his drink. A smile played over her lips and she squeezed.
‘What is it?’
‘I’m worried about you,’ said Mrs Gregson.
The sound of an explosion rolled towards them and Mrs Gregson looked startled.
‘It’s perfectly all right. Fairley is insisting they try to duplicate the conditions with a few big bangs.’ He watched a thin rope of smoke climb upwards, like some fakir’s trick. ‘Worried how?’
‘Have you looked in the mirror?’
He gave a small chuckle. ‘Best not, I think. Except for shaving.’
‘Are you eating?’
‘My appetite seems to have deserted me,’ he admitted. ‘But. Well . . .’ The sight of the young man’s blood and brains on his wall – he had moved bedrooms – came back to him every time he sat with a full plate before him. ‘It’s early days.’
‘When did you know it was Cardew?’
‘I didn’t. Not for certain. You might have noticed this, but I am not a great detective.’
Come now, Watson—
He ignored the imposter.
‘There was only ever room for one of those in the team. But I was certain it had to be someone on the technical side, someone who thought the tanks had to be delayed. I had the shoe imprints, but that was not conclusive. The wiping of the exhaust. But, to be frank, it was what the Americans call a hunch. Holmes always hated hunches. But it was the best I had.’
‘Will they work? The tanks over there? Will they shorten the war?’
He shrugged. ‘They are slow, noisy and unreliable, and an awful lot of expectation has been placed on them. In truth, I don’t know. But I am no longer as dismissive as I once was. It might take just one decisive breakthrough to get this war moving again and out of the trenches. That alone would be worth it. Anything that breaks the stalemate will save lives.’
‘And what now? Swinton won’t let us just waltz out of here. Not with the unveiling of the machines so imminent.’
Watson coughed, and he heard something rattling in his tubes. So did Mrs Gregson, who squeezed his hand until the fit passed. ‘No, I suspect not. I thought I’d volunteer for quarantine at this place, Foulness.’
‘Please, no.’ He was aware of their hands as a single entity now and he had to admit he was enjoying the sensation. He reminded himself not to enjoy it too much. A man of his vintage . . . that way lay humiliation. Yet he found himself envious of her Desmond, of the intimacy they had enjoyed, no matter how fleeting. But the man must have been half his age. Watson extracted his hands from the nest of fingers and put it from his mind.
‘I have to go. Churchill told me I was welcome to join Holmes. As his doctor.’
‘Now Winston has no further use for you. Typical. Foulness is a dreadful spot, Major. Too damp for a man in your condition. Why on earth would you do that?’
Watson turned and looked at her, fixing his eyes on hers, so she would know he was being absolutely serious. As he spoke, machine guns chattered manically in the distance.
‘Because if Sherlock Holmes is there, I am going to get him out.’
And then he began to cough again, a raspy, hacking thing that reddened his face and scoured his throat to rawness, over and over until he feared it might never stop.
‘Well,’ she said, so softly he didn’t catch her words, ‘you’ll be needing a nurse then.’
The two men who had abducted her came up with a tray of food. She knew it was a pair even before they arrived, because of the footfalls on the stairs. She sat, hands folded in her lap, at the small desk, to the right of the door. There was a knock.
‘Come in,’ she said, raising her voice just enough to be heard.
The key turned, the door pushed back slowly and the bearded one stepped through. He held nothing in his hands but a pistol, which he kept down at his side. He looked around the room and, satisfied, nodded.
The second man entered, carrying a tray with a pot of coffee and some sandwiches on it.
‘Can I have it here, please?’ Miss Pillbody asked, indicating the desk.
‘If you move away,’ said the one with the tray. ‘The guv says you’re a bit of a live one.’
She stood and took three paces back to the wall. The tray-man nodded and approached quickly, as if he wanted to get this over with. The speed was just right for her purposes. His ankle caught the steel wire she had unravelled from the crude curtain runner and stretched out across the room.
He staggered forward, the tray tipping in front of him. The beard started to laugh, thinking it was mere clumsiness. Miss Pillbody moved in, caught the tray and the coffee pot. She spun the steel disc of the tray towards the gunman, who took it full in the throat, and brought the coffee pot down on the tray-man’s head, then flung the remaining contents into the beard’s face. Then she was across the room, careful to jump over her own booby trap, and her knee went into his groin. He let out an awful squeal. She was wrestling the gun from his hand when she heard the applause. Miss Pillbody turned to find the postal censor clapping his hands, an admiring grin on his face. ‘Oh, very good, very good indeed.’
She let the bearded man slide down the wall with a groan.
‘I’ve done a little checking, Frau Brandt. It seems you are who you say you are.’ He looked down at his two dazed men and shook his head in disgust. ‘And, you know, I think you’ll do very nicely with us. Very nicely indeed.’
‘For what?’
‘New orders.’
‘From?’
‘Hersch himself. Oh, don’t worry, you can confirm it personally with him.’
‘And they are?’
‘To forget Thetford and Elveden for now. We suspect security there will be doubled or tripled in the wake of your activities. I am not attaching blame to you, you understand. But we need to get someone inside a place where tongues will be much looser about what is going on.’
‘And where is that?’
‘Have you heard of an island called Foulness?’
PART FOUR
1–16 SEPTEMBER 1916
THIRTY-SEVEN
The two men sat in comfortable silence on the sea wall, gazing across the mudflats that led out to the North Sea. Each had his pipe. Both were well wrapped against the early morning wind that was knifing down the estuary. This was an illicit meeting, forbidden by military decree, but when two men meet on a beach, each in need of a few minutes’ contemplation, no man-made law could stop them taking a few moments to enjoy some silent companionship over a pipe or two.
The sun was up, but the strange fog of the last few days had reduced it to a silvery disc, like a giant coin hoisted into the sky. The tide was running out, revealing patches of
Zostera
, out beyond the samphire. Small groups of brent geese were roaming over the shoreline, picking greedily and honking their pleasure at having the harvest all to themselves. Beyond them the sea was a line of glinting silver, slowly being drawn back behind the masking veil of mist. Gulls came and went from this shroud, as if being made to vanish by a magician who could then make them reappear at will. Something about the light and fog seemed to magnify them; to the men on land they appeared as big as rocs. As the sea retreated, it revealed spindly outcrops, the remains of ancient wrecks, some impossibly old, perhaps Vikings who had foundered during their raids, or Romans seeking passage to Londinium, the captain bewildered by a sudden fog.
‘Early this year,’ said one of the men, the older by a decade and owner of a full white beard. He pointed with the stem of his pipe to make sure his companion understood he was referring to the geese, which had recently arrived from Siberia.
The other nodded and sucked in a mouthful of hot smoke, as content as he had been for many a day. His mind, so often as foggy as this seascape, was pin-sharp. He did not believe in premonition, but something told him there were events afoot, happening off this island, that would soon impinge on him. But he had no control over whatever was brewing. So he didn’t fret about it.
Fifteen minutes passed without another word and the world seemed to shift, as if the moon was not only taking the tide out, but dragging time to a near halt.
Perhaps that was why they had chosen this place for the exiles,
he thought. It seemed to exist beyond the everyday, as if the mirages playing their tricks with sky and water out there were reality, and England, a few scant miles behind and in front of him, was but a dream. It seemed inconceivable that a war was going on, consuming vast amounts of energy and men. If the belligerents could just sit here for a few hours, they might realize the futility of it all. That in a thousand years, when they were all gone and the machinery of war rusted away, the brent geese would still come for the eelgrass and the waders for the worms and molluscs.
For all its closeness to the heart of a great Empire, he realized, this island ran on wild time, the clock of the wilderness unregulated by man.
Behind him, on the road some hundreds of yards away, he heard the noise of a vehicle, breaking the spell. There was the squeal of brakes and the sound of rough voices swelling and falling on the breeze. The army had finally woken up. There would be a patrol; recriminations at being so close to an islander.