Eye of the Needle (15 page)

Faber watched while the passengers filtered through the gate until the platform was empty. The blond man spoke urgently to the ticket collector, who shook his head. The man seemed to insist. After a moment he waved to someone out of sight. A police officer emerged from the shadows and spoke to the collector. The platform guard joined the group, followed by a man in a civilian suit who was presumably a more senior railway official.

The engine driver and his fireman left the locomotive and went over to the barrier. There was more waving of arms and shaking of heads.

Finally the railwaymen shrugged, turned away, or rolled their eyes upward, all telegraphing surrender. The blond and the police officer summoned other policemen, and they moved on to the platform.

They were obviously going to search the train.

All the railway officials, including the engine crew, had disappeared in the opposite direction, no doubt to seek out tea and sandwiches while the lunatic tried to search a jampacked train. Which gave Faber an idea.

He opened the door and jumped out of the wrong side of the train, the side opposite the platform. Concealed from the police by the cars, he ran along the tracks, stumbling on the ties and slipping on the gravel, toward the engine.

IT HAD TO BE
bad news, of course. From the moment he realized Billy Parkin was not going to saunter off that train, Frederick Bloggs knew that Die Nadel had slipped through their fingers again. As the uniformed police moved onto the train in pairs, two men to search each car, Bloggs thought of several possible explanations of Parkin’s nonappearance; and all the explanations were depressing.

He turned up his coat collar and paced the drafty platform. He wanted very badly to catch Die Nadel; and not only for the sake of the invasion—although that was reason enough, of course—but for Percy Godliman, and for the five Home Guards, and for Christine, and for himself….

He looked at his watch: four o’clock. Soon it would be day. Bloggs had been up all night, and he had not eaten since breakfast yesterday, but until now he had kept going on adrenalin. The failure of the trap—he was quite sure it
had
failed—drained him of energy. Hunger and fatigue caught up with him. He had to make a conscious effort not to daydream about hot food and a warm bed.

“Sir!” A policeman was leaning out of a car and waving at him. “Sir!”

Bloggs walked toward him, then broke into a run. “What is it?”

“It might be your man Parkin.”

Bloggs climbed into the car. “What the hell do you mean, might be?”

“You’d better have a look.” The policeman opened the communicating door between the cars and shone his flashlight inside.

It was Parkin; Bloggs could tell by the ticket inspector’s uniform. He was curled up on the floor. Bloggs took the policeman’s light, knelt down beside Parkin, and turned him over.

He saw Parkin’s face, looked quickly away. “Oh, dear God.”

“I take it this is Parkin?” the policeman said.

Bloggs nodded. He got up, very slowly, without looking again at the body. “We’ll interview everybody in this car and the next,” he said. “Anyone who saw or heard anything unusual will be detained for further questioning. Not that it will do us any good; the murderer must have jumped off the train before it got here.”

Bloggs went back out on the platform. All the searchers had completed their tasks and were gathered in a group. He detailed six of them to help with the interviewing.

The police-inspector said, “Your man’s hopped it, then.”

“Almost certainly. You’ve looked in every toilet, and the guard’s van?”

“Yes, and on top of the train and under it, and in the engine and the coal tender.”

A passenger got off the train and approached Bloggs and the inspector. He was a small man who wheezed badly. “Excuse me,” he said.

“Yes, sir,” the inspector said.

“I was wondering, are you looking for somebody?”

“Why do you ask?”

“Well, if you are, I was wondering, would he be a tall chap?”

“Why do you ask?”

Bloggs interrupted impatiently. “Yes, a tall man. Come on, spit it out.”

“Well, it’s just that a tall chap got out the wrong side of the train.”

“When?”

“A minute or two after the train pulled into the station. He got on, like, then he got off, on the wrong side. Jumped down onto the track. Only he had no luggage, you see, which was another odd thing, and I just thought—”

The inspector said, “Balls.”

“He must have spotted the trap,” Bloggs said. “But how? He doesn’t know my face, and your men were out of sight.”

“Something made him suspicious.”

“So he crossed the line to the next platform and went out that way. Wouldn’t he have been seen?”

The inspector shrugged. “Not too many people about this late. And if he was seen he could just say he was too impatient to queue at the ticket barrier.”

“Didn’t you have the other ticket barriers covered?”

“Afraid I didn’t think of it…well, we can search the surrounding area, and later on we can check various places in the city, and of course we’ll watch the ferry—”

“Yes, please do,” Bloggs said.

But somehow he knew Faber would not be found.

It was more than an hour before the train started to move. Faber had a cramp in his left calf and dust in his nose. He heard the engineer and fireman climb back into their cab, and caught snatches of conversation about a body being found on the train. There was a metallic rattle as the fireman shoveled coal, then the hiss of steam, a clanking of pistons, a jerk and a sigh of smoke as the train moved off. Gratefully, Faber shifted his position and indulged in a smothered sneeze. He felt better.

He was at the back of the coal tender, buried deep in the coal, where it would take a man with a shovel ten minutes’ hard work to expose him. As he had hoped, the police search of the tender had consisted of one good long look and no more.

He wondered whether he could risk emerging now. It must be getting light; would he be visible from a bridge over the line? He thought not. His skin was now quite black, and in a moving train in the pale light of dawn he would just be a dark blur on a dark background. Yes, he would chance it. Slowly and carefully, he dug his way out of his grave of coal.

He breathed deeply of the cool air. The coal was shoveled out of the tender via a small hole in the front end. Later, perhaps, the fireman would have to enter the tender when the pile of fuel got lower. But he was safe for now.

As the light strengthened he looked himself over. He was covered from head to toe in coal dust, like a miner coming up from the pit. Somehow he had to wash and change his clothes.

He chanced a look over the side of the tender. The train was still in the suburbs, passing factories and warehouses and rows of grimy little houses. He had to think about his next move.

His original plan had been to get off the train at Glasgow and there catch another train to Dundee and up the east coast to Aberdeen. It was still possible for him to disembark at Glasgow. He could not get off at the station, of course, but he might jump off either just before or just after. However, there were risks in that. The train was sure to stop at intermediate stations between Liverpool and Glasgow, and at those stops he might be spotted. No, he had to get off the train soon and find another means of transport.

The ideal place would be a lonely stretch of track just outside a city or village. It had to be lonely—he must not be seen leaping from the coal tender—but it had to be fairly near houses so that he could steal clothes and a car. And it needed to be an uphill grade of track so that the train would be traveling slowly enough for him to jump.

Right now its speed was about forty miles an hour. Faber lay back on the coal to wait. He could not keep a permanent watch on the country through which he was passing, for fear of being seen. He decided he would look out whenever the train slowed down. Otherwise he would lie still.

After a few minutes he caught himself dropping off to sleep, despite the discomfort of his position. He shifted and reclined on his elbows so that if he did sleep he would fall and be wakened by the impact.

The train was gathering speed. Between London and Liverpool it had seemed to be stationary more than moving; now it steamed through the country at a fine pace. To complete his discomfort, it started to rain: a cold, steady drizzle that soaked right through his clothes and seemed to turn to ice on his skin. Another reason for getting off the train; he could die of exposure before they reached Glasgow.

After half an hour at high speed he was contemplating killing the engine crew and stopping the train himself. A signal box saved their lives. The train slowed suddenly as brakes were applied. It decelerated in stages; Faber guessed the track was marked with descending speed limits. He looked out. They were in the countryside again. He could see the reason for the slowdown—they were approaching a track junction, and the signals were against them.

Faber stayed in the tender while the train stood still. After five minutes it started up again. Faber scrambled up the side of the tender, perched on the edge for a moment, and jumped.

He landed on the embankment and lay, face down, in the overgrown weeds. When the train was out of earshot he got to his feet. The only sign of civilization nearby was the signal box, a two-story wooden structure with large windows in the control room at the top, an outside staircase and a door at ground-floor level. On the far side was a cinder track leading away.

Faber walked in a wide circle to approach the place from the back, where there were no windows. He entered a ground-floor door and found what he had been expecting: a toilet, a washbasin, and, as a bonus, a coat hanging on a peg.

He took off his soaking wet clothes, washed his hands and face and rubbed himself vigorously all over with a grubby towel. The little cylindrical film can containing the negatives was still taped securely to his chest. He put his clothes back on, but substituted the signalman’s overcoat for his own sopping wet jacket.

Now all he needed was transport. The signalman must have got here somehow. Faber went outside and found a bicycle padlocked to a rail on the other side of the small building. He snapped the little lock with the blade of his stiletto. Moving in a straight line away from the blank rear wall of the signal box, he wheeled the cycle until he was out of sight of the building. Then he cut across until he reached the cinder track, climbed on the cycle and pedaled away.

16

P
ERCIVAL GODLIMAN HAD BROUGHT A SMALL CAMP
bed from his home. He lay on it in his office, dressed in trousers and shirt, trying without success to sleep. He had not suffered insomnia for almost forty years, not since he took his final exams at the university. He would gladly swap the anxieties of those days for the worries that kept him awake now.

He had been a different man then, he knew; not just younger, but also considerably less…abstracted. He had been outgoing, aggressive, ambitious; he planned to go into politics. He was not studious then—he had reason to be anxious about the exams.

His two mismatched enthusiasms in those days had been debating and ballroom dancing. He had spoken with distinction at the Oxford Union and had been pictured in
The Tatler
waltzing with debutantes. He was no great womanizer; he wanted sex with a woman he loved, not because he believed in any high-minded principles to that effect, but because that was the way he felt about it.

And so he had been a virgin until he met Eleanor, who was not one of the debutantes but a brilliant graduate mathematician with grace and warmth and a father dying of lung disease after forty years as a coal mine worker. He had taken her to meet his people. His father was Lord Lieutenant of the county, and the house had seemed a mansion to Eleanor, but she had been natural and charming and not in the least awestruck; and when Percy’s mother had been disgracefully condescending to her at one point she had reacted with merciless wit, for which he loved her all the more.

He had taken his master’s degree, then after the Great War he taught in a public school and stood in three by-elections. They were both disappointed when they discovered they could not have children; but they loved each other totally and they were happy, and her death was the most appalling tragedy Godliman ever knew. It had ended his interest in the real world, and he had retreated into the Middle Ages.

It had drawn him and Bloggs together, this common bereavement. And the war had brought him back to life; revived in him those characteristics of dash and aggression and fervor that had made him a fine speaker and teacher and the hope of the Liberal Party. He wished very much for something in Bloggs’s life to rescue him from an existence of bitterness and introspection.

At the moment he was in Godliman’s thoughts, Bloggs phoned from Liverpool to say that Die Nadel had slipped through the net, and Parkin had been killed.

Godliman, sitting on the edge of the camp bed to speak on the phone, closed his eyes. “I should have put you on the train…”

“Thanks!” Bloggs said.

“Only because he doesn’t know your face.”

“I think he may,” Bloggs said. “We suspect he spotted the trap, and mine was the only face visible to him as he got off the train.”

“But where could he have seen you—oh, Leicester Square.”

“I don’t see how, but then…we seem to underestimate him.”

Godliman asked impatiently, “Have you got the ferry covered?”

“Yes.”

“He won’t use it, of course—too obvious. He’s more likely to steal a boat. On the other hand, he may still be heading for Inverness.”

“I’ve alerted the police up there.”

“Good. But look, I don’t think we can make any assumptions about his destination. Let’s keep an open mind.”

“Yes.”

Godliman stood, picked up the phone, and began to pace the carpet. “Also, don’t assume it was he who got off the train on the wrong side. Work on the premise that he got off before, at, or after Liverpool.” Godliman’s brain was in gear again, sorting permutations and possibilities. “Let me talk to the Chief Superintendent.”

“He’s here.”

There was a pause, then a new voice said, “Chief Superintendent Anthony speaking.”

Godliman said, “Do you agree with me that our man got off this train somewhere in your area?”

“That seems likely, yes.”

“All right. Now the first thing he needs is transport—so I want you to get details of every car, boat, bicycle, or donkey stolen within a hundred miles of Liverpool during the next twenty-four hours. Keep me informed, but give the information to Bloggs and work closely with him following up the leads.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Keep an eye on other crimes that might be committed by a fugitive—theft of food or clothing, unexplained assaults, identity card irregularities, and so on.”

“Right.”

“Now, Mr. Anthony, you realize this man is more than just a conventional murderer?”

“I assume so, sir, from the fact of your involvement. However, I don’t know the details.”

“It’s a matter of national security, important enough to keep the Prime Minister in hourly contact with this office.”

“Yes…uh, Mr. Bloggs would like a word, sir.”

Bloggs came back on. “Have you remembered how you know his face? You said you thought you did—”

“Oh, yes—and it’s of no value, as I predicted. I met him by chance at Canterbury Cathedral and we had a conversation about the architecture. All it tells us is that he’s clever—he made some perceptive remarks, as I recall.”

“We knew he was clever.”

“As I said, it does us no good.”

Chief Superintendent Anthony, a determined member of the middle class with a carefully softened Liverpool accent, did not know whether to be peeved at the way M15 ordered him about or thrilled at the chance to save England on his own manor.

Bloggs recognized the man’s conflict—he’d met with it before when working with local police forces—and he knew how to tip the balance in his own favor. He said, “I’m grateful for your helpfulness, Chief Superintendent. These things don’t go unnoticed in Whitehall, you know.”

“Only doing our duty…” Anthony was not sure whether he was supposed to call Bloggs “Sir.”

“Still, there’s a big difference between reluctant assistance and willing help.”

“Yes. Well, it’ll likely be a few hours before we pick up this man’s scent again. Do you want to catch forty winks?”

“Yes,” Bloggs said gratefully. “If you’ve got a chair in a corner somewhere…”

“Stay here,” Anthony said, indicating his office. “I’ll be down in the operations room. I’ll wake you as soon as we’ve got something. Make yourself comfortable.”

Anthony went out, and Bloggs moved to an easy chair and sat back with his eyes closed. Immediately, he saw Godliman’s face, as if projected onto the backs of his eyelids like a film, saying, “There has to be an end to bereavement…I don’t want you to make the same mistake…” Bloggs realized suddenly that he did not want the war to end; that would make him
face
issues, like the one Godliman had raised. The war made life simple—he knew why he hated the enemy and he knew what he was supposed to do about it. Afterward…but the thought of another woman seemed disloyal.

He yawned and slumped farther into his seat, his thinking becoming woolly as sleep crept up on him. If Christine had died before the war he would have felt very differently about remarrying. He had always been fond of her and respected her, of course; but after she took that ambulance job respect had turned to near-awestruck admiration, and fondness turned to love. Then they had something special, something they knew other lovers did not share. Now, more than a year later, it would be easy for Bloggs to find another woman he could respect and be fond of, but he knew that would no longer be enough for him. An ordinary marriage, an ordinary woman, would always remind him that once he, a rather ordinary man, had had the most extraordinary of women….

He stirred in his chair, trying to shake off his thoughts so that he could sleep. England was full of heroes, Godliman had said. Well, if Die Nadel got away…

First things first….

Someone shook him. He was in a very deep sleep, dreaming that he was in a room with Die Nadel but could not pick him out because Die Nadel had blinded him with a stiletto. When he awoke he still thought he was blind because he could not see who was shaking him, until he realized he simply had his eyes closed. He opened them to see the large uniformed figure of Superintendent Anthony above him.

Bloggs raised himself to a more upright position and rubbed his eyes. “Got something?” he asked.

“Lots of things,” Anthony said. “Question is, which of ’em counts? Here’s your breakfast.” He put a cup of tea and a biscuit on the desk and went to sit on the other side of it.

Bloggs left his easy chair and pulled a hard chair up to the desk. He sipped the tea. It was weak and very sweet. “Let’s get to it,” he said.

Anthony handed him a sheaf of five or six slips of paper.

Bloggs said, “Don’t tell me these are the only crimes in your area—”

“Of course not,” Anthony said. “We’re not interested in drunkenness, domestic disputes, blackout violations, traffic offenses, or crimes for which arrests have already been made.”

“Sorry,” Bloggs said. “I’m still waking up. Let me read these.”

There were three house burglaries. In two of them valuables had been taken—jewelry in one case, furs in another. Bloggs said, “He might steal valuables just to throw us off the scent. Mark these on the map, will you? They may show some pattern.” He handed the two slips back to Anthony. The third burglary had only just been reported, and no details were available. Anthony marked the location on the map.

A Food Office in Manchester had been robbed of hundreds of ration books. Bloggs said, “He doesn’t need ration books—he needs food.” He set that one aside. There was a bicycle theft just outside Preston and a rape in Birkenhead. “I don’t think he’s a rapist, but mark it anyway,” Bloggs told Anthony.

The bicycle theft and the third of the house burglaries were close together. Bloggs said, “the signal box that the bike was stolen from—is that on the main line?”

“Yes, I think so,” Anthony said.

“Suppose Faber was hiding on that train and somehow we missed him. Would the signal box be the first place the train stopped at after it left Liverpool?”

“It might be.”

Bloggs looked at the sheet of paper. “An overcoat was stolen and a wet jacket left in its place.”

Anthony shrugged. “Could mean anything.”

“No cars stolen?”

“Nor boats, nor donkeys,” Anthony replied. “We don’t get many car thefts these days. Cars are easy to come by—it’s petrol people steal.”

“I felt sure he’d steal a car in Liverpool,” Bloggs said. He thumped his knee in frustration. “A bicycle isn’t much use to him, surely.”

“I think we should follow it up, anyway,” Anthony pressed. “It’s our best lead.”

“All right. But meanwhile, double-check the burglaries to see whether food or clothing was pinched—the victims might not have noticed at first. Show Faber’s picture to the rape victim, too. And keep checking all crimes. Can you fix me transport to Preston?”

“I’ll get you a car,” Anthony said.

“How long will it take to get details of this third burglary?”

“They’re probably interviewing at this minute,” Anthony said. “By the time you reach the signal box I should have the complete picture.”

“Don’t let them drag their feet.” Bloggs reached for his coat. “I’ll check with you the minute I get there.”

“ANTHONY?
This is Bloggs. I’m at the signal box.”

“Don’t waste any time there. The third burglary was your man.”

“Sure?”

“Unless there are two buggers running around threatening people with stiletto knives.”

“Who?”

“Two old ladies living alone in a little cottage.”

“Oh, God. Dead?”

“Not unless they died of excitement.”

“Eh?”

“Get over there. You’ll see what I mean.”

“I’m on my way.”

IT WAS
the kind of cottage that is always inhabited by two elderly ladies living alone. It was small and square and old, and around the door grew a wild rose bush fertilized by thousands of pots of used tea leaves. Rows of vegetables sprouted tidily in a little front garden with a trimmed hedge. There were pink-and-white curtains at the leaded windows, and the gate creaked. The front door had been painted painstakingly by an amateur, and its knocker was made from a horseshoe.

Bloggs knock was answered by an octogenarian with a shotgun.

He said, “Good morning. I’m from the police.”

“No, you’re not,” she said. “They’ve been already. Now get going before I blow your head off.”

Bloggs regarded her. She was less than five feet tall, with thick white hair in a bun and a pale, wrinkled face. Her hands were matchstick-thin, but her grasp on the shotgun was firm. The pocket of her apron was full of clothes-pegs. Bloggs looked down at her feet, and saw that she was wearing a man’s working boots. He said: “The police you saw this morning were local. I’m from Scotland Yard.”

“How do I know that?” she said.

Bloggs turned and called to his police driver. The constable got out of the car and came to the gate. Bloggs said to the old lady, “Is the uniform enough to convince you?”

“All right,” she said, and stood aside for him to enter.

He stepped down into a low-ceiling room with a tiled floor. The room was crammed with heavy, old furniture, and every surface was decorated with ornaments of china and glass. A small coal fire burned in the grate. The place smelled of lavender and cats.

A second old lady got out of a chair. She was like the first, but about twice as wide. Two cats spilled from her lap as she rose. She said, “Hello, I’m Emma Patron, my sister is Jessie. Don’t take any notice of that shotgun—it’s not loaded, thank God. Jessie loves drama. Will you sit down? You look so young to be a policeman. I’m surprised Scotland Yard is interested in our little robbery. Have you come from London this morning? Make the boy a cup of tea, Jessie.”

Bloggs sat down. “If we’re right about the identity of the burglar, he’s a fugitive from justice,” he said.

“I told you!” Jessie said. “We might have been done in—slaughtered in cold blood!”

“Don’t be silly,” Emma said. She turned to Bloggs. “He was such a nice man.”

“Tell me what happened,” Bloggs said.

“Well, I’d gone out the back,” Emma began. “I was in the hen coop, hoping for some eggs. Jessie was in the kitchen—”