Eye of the Needle (12 page)
F
ABER LEANED AGAINST A TREE, SHIVERING, AND THREW
up. Then he considered whether he should bury the five dead men.
It would take between thirty and sixty minutes, he estimated, depending on how well he concealed the bodies. During that time he might be caught.
He had to weigh that risk against the precious hours he might gain by delaying the discovery of the deaths. The five men would be missed very soon—there would be a search under way by around nine o’clock. Assuming they were on a regular patrol, their route would be known. The searchers’ first move would be to send a runner to cover the route. If the bodies were left as they were, he would see them and raise the alarm. Otherwise, he would report back and a full-scale search would be mounted, with bloodhounds and policemen beating the bushes. It might take them all day to discover the corpses. By that time Faber could be in London. It was important for him to be out of the area before they knew they were looking for a murderer. He decided to risk the additional hour.
He swam back across the canal with the elderly captain across his shoulder, dumped him unceremoniously behind a bush, then retrieved the two bodies from the well of the boat and piled them on top of the captain. Next he added Watson and the corporal to the heap.
He had no spade and he needed a big grave. He found a patch of loose earth a few yards into the wood. The ground there was slightly hollowed, to give him an advantage. He got a saucepan from the boat’s tiny galley and began to dig.
For a couple of feet there was just leaf mold, and the going was easy. Then he got down to clay and digging became extremely difficult. In half an hour he had added only another eighteen inches of depth to the hole. It would have to do.
He carried the bodies to the hole one by one and threw them in. Then he took off his muddy, bloodstained clothes and dropped them on top. He covered the grave with loose earth and a layer of foliage ripped from nearby bushes and trees. It should be good enough to pass that first superficial inspection.
He kicked earth over the patch of ground near the bank where the life-blood of Watson had poured out. There was blood in the boat, too, where the impaled soldier had lain. Faber found a rag and swabbed down the deck.
Then he put on clean clothes, made sail, and moved off.
He did not fish or watch birds; this was no time for pleasant embellishments to his cover. Instead he piled on the sail, putting as much distance as possible between himself and the grave. He had to get off the water and into some faster transport as soon as possible. He reflected, as he sailed, on the relative merits of catching a train and stealing a car. A car was faster, if one could be found to steal; but the search for it might start quite soon, regardless of whether the theft was connected with the missing Home Guard patrol. Finding a railway station might take a long time, but it seemed safer; if he were careful he could escape suspicion for most of the day.
He wondered what to do about the boat. Ideally he would scuttle it, but he might be seen doing so. If he left it in a harbor somewhere, or simply moored at the canalside, the police would connect it with the murders that much sooner; and that would tell them in which direction he was moving. He postponed the decision.
Unfortunately, he was not sure where he was. His map of England’s waterways gave every bridge, harbor and lock; but it did not show railway lines. He calculated he was within an hour or two’s walk of half a dozen villages, but a village did not necessarily mean a station.
The two problems were solved at once; the canal went under a railway bridge.
He took his compass, the film from the camera, his wallet and his stiletto. All his other possessions would go down with the boat.
The towpath on both sides was shaded with trees, and there were no roads nearby. He furled the sails, dismantled the base of the mast, and laid the pole on the deck. Then he removed the bung-hole stopper from the keel and stepped on to the bank, holding the rope.
Gradually filling with water, the boat drifted under the bridge. Faber hauled on the rope to hold the vessel in position directly under the brick arch as it sank. The afterdeck went under first, the prow followed, and finally the water of the canal closed over the roof of the cabin. There were a few bubbles, then nothing. The outline of the boat was hidden from a casual glance by the shadow of the bridge. Faber threw the rope in.
The railway line ran northeast to southwest. Faber climbed the embankment and walked southwest, which was the direction in which London lay. It was a two-line track, probably a rural branch line. There would be a few trains, but they would stop at all stations.
The sun grew stronger as he walked, and the exertion made him hot. When he had buried his bloodstained black clothes he had put on a double-breasted blazer and heavy flannel trousers. Now he took off the blazer and slung it over his shoulder.
After forty minutes he heard a distant chuff-chuff-chuff and hid in a bush beside the line. An old steam engine went slowly by, heading northeast, puffing great clouds of smoke and hauling a train of coal trucks. If one came by in the opposite direction, he could jump it. Should he? It would save him a long walk. On the other hand, he would get conspicuously dirty and he might have trouble disembarking without being seen. No, it was safer to walk.
The line ran straight as an arrow across the flat countryside. Faber passed a farmer, ploughing a field with a tractor. There was no way to avoid being seen. The farmer waved to him without stopping in his work. He was too far away to get a good sight of Faber’s face.
He had walked about ten miles when he saw a station ahead. It was half a mile away, and all he could see was the rise of the platforms and a cluster of signals. He left the line and cut across the fields, keeping close to borders of trees, until he met a road.
Within a few minutes he entered the village. There was nothing to tell him its name. Now that the threat of invasion was a memory, signposts and place-names were being re-erected, but this village had not got around to it.
There was a Post Office, a Corn Store, and a pub called The Bull. A woman with a pram gave him a friendly “Good morning!” as he passed the War Memorial. The little station basked sleepily in the spring sunshine. Faber went in.
A timetable was pasted to a notice-board. Faber stood in front of it. From behind the little ticket window a voice said: “I shouldn’t take any notice of that, if I were you. It’s the biggest work of fiction since
The Forsyte Saga
.”
Faber had known the timetable would be out of date, but he had needed to establish whether the trains went to London. They did. He said, “Any idea what time the next train leaves for Liverpool Street?”
The clerk laughed sarcastically. “Sometime today, if you’re lucky.”
“I’ll buy a ticket anyway. Single, please.”
“Five-and-fourpence. They say the Italian trains run on time,” the clerk said.
“Not anymore,” Faber remarked. “Anyway, I’d rather have bad trains and our politics.”
The man shot him a nervous look. “You’re right, of course. Do you want to wait in The Bull? You’ll hear the train—or, if not, I’ll send for you.”
Faber did not want more people to see his face. “No, thanks, I’d only spend money.” He took his ticket and went on to the platform.
The clerk followed him a few minutes later, and sat on the bench beside him in the sunshine. He said, “You in a hurry?”
Faber shook his head. “I’ve written today off. I got up late, I quarreled with the boss, and the truck that gave me a lift broke down.”
“One of those days. Ah, well.” The clerk looked at his watch. “She went up on time this morning, and what goes up must come down, they say. You might be lucky.” He went back into his office.
Faber was lucky. The train came twenty minutes later. It was crowded with farmers, families, businessmen and soldiers. Faber found a space on the floor close to a window. As the train lumbered away, he picked up a discarded two-day-old newspaper, borrowed a pencil, and started to do the crossword. He was proud of his ability to do crosswords in English—it was the acid test of fluency in a foreign language. After a while the motion of the train lulled him into a shallow sleep, and he dreamed.
IT WAS
a familiar dream, the dream of his arrival in London.
He had crossed from France, carrying a Belgian passport that said he was Jan van Gelder, a representative for Phillips (which would explain his suitcase radio if Customs opened it). His English then was fluent but not colloquial. The Customs had not bothered him; he was an ally. He had caught the train to London. In those days there had been plenty of empty seats in the carriages, and you could get a meal. Faber had dined on roast beef and Yorkshire pudding. It amused him. He had talked with a history student from Cardiff about the European political situation. The dream was like the reality until the train stopped at Waterloo. Then it turned into a nightmare.
The trouble started at the ticket barrier. Like all dreams it had its own weird illogicality. The document they queried was not his forged passport but his perfectly legitimate railway ticket. The collector said, “This is an Abwehr ticket.”
“No, it is not,” said Faber, speaking with a ludicrously thick German accent. What had happened to his dainty English consonants? They would not come. “I have it in Dover gekauft.” Damn, that did it.
But the ticket collector, who had turned into a London policeman complete with helmet, seemed to ignore the sudden lapse into German. He smiled politely and said, “I’d better just check your Klamotte, sir.”
The station was crowded with people. Faber thought that if he could get into the crowd he might escape. He dropped the suitcase radio and fled, pushing his way through the crowd. Suddenly he realized he had left his trousers on the train, and there were swastikas on his socks. He would have to buy trousers at the very first shop, before people noticed the trouserless running man with Nazi hose. Then someone in the crowd said, “I’ve seen your face before,” and tripped him, and he fell with a bump and landed on the floor of the railway carriage where he had gone to sleep.
HE BLINKED,
yawned and looked around him. He had a headache. For a moment he was filled with relief that it was all a dream, then he was amused by the ridiculousness of the symbolism—swastika socks, for God’s sake!
A man in overalls beside him said, “You had a good sleep.”
Faber looked up sharply. He was always afraid of talking in his sleep and giving himself away. “I had an unpleasant dream,” he said. The man made no comment.
It was getting dark. He
had
slept for a long time. The carriage light came on suddenly, a single blue bulb, and someone drew the blinds. People’s faces turned into pale, featureless ovals. The workman became talkative again. “You missed the excitement,” he told Faber.
Faber frowned. “What happened?” It was impossible he should have slept through some kind of police check.
“One of them Yank trains passed us. It was going about ten miles an hour, nigger driving it, ringing its bell, with a bloody great cowcatcher on the front! Talk about the Wild West.”
Faber smiled and thought back to the dream. In fact his arrival in London had been without incident. He had checked into a hotel at first, still using his Belgian cover. Within a week he had visited several country churchyards, taken the names of men his age from the gravestones, and applied for three duplicate birth certificates. Then he took lodgings and found humble work, using forged references from a nonexistent Manchester firm. He had even got on to the electoral register in High-gate before the war. He voted Conservative. When rationing came in, the ration books were issued via householders to every person who had slept in the house on a particular night. Faber contrived to spend part of that night in each of three different houses, and so obtained papers for each of his personae. He burned the Belgian passport—in the unlikely event he should need a passport, he could get three British ones.
The train stopped, and from the noise outside the passengers guessed they had arrived. When Faber got out he realized how hungry and thirsty he was. His last meal had been sausage-meat, dry biscuits and bottled water, twenty-four hours ago. He went through the ticket barrier and found the station buffet. It was full of people, mostly soldiers, sleeping or trying to sleep at the tables. Faber asked for a cheese sandwich and a cup of tea.
“The food is reserved for servicemen,” said the woman behind the counter.
“Just the tea, then.”
“Got a cup?”
Faber was surprised. “No, I haven’t.”
“Neither have we, chum.”
Faber contemplated going into the Great Eastern Hotel for dinner, but that would take time. He found a pub and drank two pints of weak beer, then bought a bag of chips at a fish-and-chips shop and ate them from the newspaper wrapping, standing on the pavement. They made him feel surprisingly full.
Now he had to find a chemist’s shop and break in.
He wanted to develop his film, to make sure the pictures came out. He was not going to risk returning to Germany with a roll of spoiled, useless film. If the pictures were no good he would have to steal more film and go back. The thought was unbearable.
It would have to be a small independent shop, not a branch of a chain that would process film centrally. It must be in an area where the local people could afford cameras (or could have afforded them before the war). The part of East London in which Liverpool Street station stood was no good. He decided to head toward Bloomsbury.
The moonlit streets were quiet. There had been no sirens so far tonight. Two Military Policemen stopped him in Chancery Lane and asked for his identity card. Faber pretended to be slightly drunk, and the MPs did not ask what he was doing out of doors.
He found the shop he was looking for at the north end of Southampton Row. There was a Kodak sign in the window. Surprisingly, the shop was open. He went in.