Eye of the Needle (9 page)

Godliman and Bloggs were on opposite sides of a wooden table in the records room at Old Scotland Yard. Godliman tossed the file across the table and said, “I think this is it.”

Bloggs glanced through it and said, “The stiletto.”

They signed for the file and walked the short distance to the War Office. When they returned to Godliman’s room, there was a decoded signal on his desk. He read it casually, then thumped the table in excitement. “It’s him!”

Bloggs read: “Orders received. Regards to Willi.”

“Remember him?” Godliman said. “Die Nadel?”

“Yes,” Bloggs said hesitantly. “The Needle. But there’s not much information here.”

“Think, think! A stiletto is like a needle. It’s the same man: the murder of Mrs. Garden, all those signals in 1940 that we couldn’t trace, the rendezvous with Blondie…”

“Possibly.” Bloggs looked thoughtful.

“I can prove it,” Godliman said. “Remember the transmission about Finland that you showed me the first day I came here? The one that was interrupted?”

“Yes.” Bloggs went to the file to find it.

“If my memory serves me well, the date of that transmission is the same as the date of this murder…and I’ll bet the time of death coincides with the interruption.”

Bloggs looked at the signal in the file. “Right both times.”

“There!”

“He’s been operating in London for at least five years, and it’s taken us until now to get on to him,” Bloggs reflected. “He won’t be easy to catch.”

Godliman suddenly looked wolfish. “He may be clever, but he’s not as clever as me,” he said tightly. “I am going to nail him to the fucking wall.”

Bloggs laughed out loud. “My God, you’ve changed, Professor.”

Godliman said, “Do you realize that’s the first time you’ve laughed for a year?”

9

T
HE SUPPLY BOAT ROUNDED THE HEADLAND AND
chugged into the bay at Storm Island under a blue sky. There were two women in it: one was the skipper’s wife—he had been called up and now she ran the business—and the other was Lucy’s mother.

Mother got out of the boat wearing a utility suit, a mannish jacket and an above-the-knee skirt. Lucy hugged her mightily.

“Mother! What a surprise!”

“But I wrote to you.”

The letter was with the mail on the boat; Mother had forgotten that the post only came once a fortnight on Storm Island.

“Is this my grandson? Isn’t he a big boy?”

Little Jo, almost three years old, turned bashful and hid behind Lucy’s skirt. He was dark-haired, pretty, and tall for his age.

Mother said: “Isn’t he like his father!”

“Yes,” Lucy said. “You must be freezing—come up to the house. Where
did
you get that skirt?”

They picked up the groceries and began to walk up the ramp to the cliff top. Mother chattered as they went. “It’s the fashion, dear. It saves on material. But it isn’t as cold as this on the mainland. Such a wind! I suppose it’s all right to leave my case on the jetty—nobody to steal it! Jane is engaged to an American soldier—a white one, thank God. He comes from a place called Milwaukee, and he doesn’t chew gum. Isn’t that nice? I’ve only got four more daughters to marry off now. Your father is a Captain in the Home Guard, did I tell you? He’s up half the night patrolling the common waiting for German parachutists. Uncle Stephen’s warehouse was bombed—I don’t know
what
he’ll do, it’s an Act of War or something—”

“Don’t rush, Mother, you’ve got fourteen days to tell me the news.” Lucy laughed.

They reached the cottage. Mother said, “Isn’t this
lovely
?” They went in. “I think this is just lovely.”

Lucy parked Mother at the kitchen table and made tea. “Tom will get your case up. He’ll be here for his lunch shortly.”

“The shepherd?”

“Yes.”

“Does he find things for David to do, then?”

Lucy laughed. “It’s the other way around. I’m sure he’ll tell you all about it himself. You haven’t told me why you’re here.”

“My dear, it’s about time I saw you. I know you’re not supposed to make unnecessary journeys, but once in four years isn’t extravagant, is it?”

They heard the jeep outside, and a moment later David wheeled himself in. He kissed his mother-in-law and introduced Tom.

Lucy said, “Tom, you can earn your lunch today by bringing Mother’s case up, as she carried your groceries.”

David was warming his hands at the stove. “It’s raw today.”

“You’re really taking sheep-farming seriously, then?” Mother said.

“The flock is double what it was three years ago,” David told her. “My father never farmed this island seriously. I’ve fenced six miles of the cliff top, improved the grazing, and introduced modern breeding methods. Not only do we have more sheep, but each animal gives us more meat and wool.”

Mother said tentatively, “I suppose Tom does the physical work and you give the orders.”

David laughed. “Equal partners, Mother.”

They had hearts for lunch, and both men ate mountains of potatoes. Mother commented favorably on Jo’s table manners. Afterwards David lit a cigarette and Tom stuffed his pipe.

Mother said, “What I really want to know is when you’re going to give us more grandchildren.” She smiled brightly.

There was a long silence.

“WELL,
I think it’s wonderful, the way David copes,” said Mother.

Lucy said, “Yes.”

They were walking along the cliff top. The wind had dropped on the third day of Mother’s visit and it was mild enough to go out. They took Jo, dressed in a fisherman’s sweater and a fur coat. They had stopped at the top of a rise to watch David, Tom and the dog herding sheep. Lucy could see in Mother’s face an internal struggle between concern and discretion. She decided to save her mother the effort of asking.

“He doesn’t love me,” she said.

Mother looked quickly to make sure Jo was out of earshot. “I’m sure it’s not that bad, dear. Different men show their love in diff—”

“Mother, we haven’t been man and wife—properly—since we were married.”

“But?…” She indicated Jo with a nod.

“That was a week before the wedding.”

“Oh! Oh, dear. Is it, you know, the accident?”

“Yes, but not in the way you mean. It’s nothing physical. He just…won’t.” Lucy was crying quietly, the tears trickling down her wind-browned cheeks.

“Have you talked about it?”

“I’ve tried.”

“Perhaps with time—”

“It’s been almost four years!”

There was a pause. They began to walk on across the heather, into the weak afternoon sun. Jo chased gulls. Mother said, “I almost left your father, once.”

It was Lucy’s turn to be shocked. “When?”

“It was soon after Jane was born. We weren’t so well-off in those days, you know—Father was still working for his father, and there was a slump. I was expecting for the third time in three years, and it seemed that a life of having babies and making ends meet stretched out in front of me with nothing to relieve the monotony. Then I discovered he was seeing an old flame of his—Brenda Simmonds, you never knew her, she went to Basingstoke. Suddenly I asked myself what I was doing it for, and I couldn’t think of a sensible answer.”

Lucy had dim, patchy memories of those days: her grandfather with a white moustache; her father in a more slender edition; extended family meals in the great farmhouse kitchen; a lot of laughter and sunshine and animals. Even then her parents’ marriage had seemed to represent solid contentment, happy permanence. She said, “Why didn’t you? Leave, I mean.”

“Oh, people just didn’t, in those days. There wasn’t all this divorce, and a woman couldn’t get a job.”

“Women work at all sorts of things now.”

“They did in the last war, but everything changed afterward with a bit of unemployment. I expect it will be the same this time. Men get their way, you know, generally speaking.”

“And you’re glad you stayed.” It was not a question.

“People my age shouldn’t make pronouncements about life. But
my
life has been a matter of making-do, and the same goes for most of the women I know. Steadfastness always looks like a sacrifice, but usually it isn’t. Anyway, I’m not going to give you advice. You wouldn’t take it, and if you did you’d blame your problems on me, I expect.”

“Oh, Mother.” Lucy smiled.

Mother said, “Shall we turn around? I think we’ve gone far enough for one day.”

IN THE KITCHEN
one evening Lucy said to David, “I’d like Mother to stay another two weeks, if she will.” Mother was upstairs putting Jo to bed, telling him a story.

“Isn’t a fortnight long enough for you to dissect my personality?” David said.

“Don’t be silly, David.”

He wheeled himself over to her chair. “Are you telling me you don’t talk about me?”

“Of course we talk about you—you’re my husband.”

“What do you say to her?”

“Why are you so worried?” Lucy said, not without malice. “What are you so ashamed of?”

“Damn you, I’ve nothing to be ashamed of. No one wants his personal life talked about by a pair of gossiping women—”

“We don’t gossip about you.”

“What do you say?”

“Aren’t you touchy!”

“Answer my question.”

“I say I want to leave you, and she tries to talk me out of it.”

He spun around and wheeled away. “Tell her not to bother for my sake.”

She called, “Do you mean that?”

He stopped. “I don’t need anybody, do you understand? I can manage alone.”

“And what about me?” she said quietly. “Perhaps I need somebody.”

“What for?”

“To love me.”

Mother came in, and sensed the atmosphere. “He’s fast asleep,” she said. “Dropped off before Cinderella got to the ball. I think I’ll pack a few things, not to leave it all until tomorrow.” She went out again.

“Do you think it will ever change, David?” Lucy asked.

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“Will we ever be…the way we were, before the wedding?”

“My legs won’t grow back, if that’s what you mean.”

“Oh, God, don’t you know that doesn’t bother me? I just want to be loved.”

David shrugged. “That’s your problem.” He went out before she started to cry.

MOTHER DID NOT STAY
the second fortnight. Lucy walked with her down the jetty the next day. It was raining hard, and they both wore mackintoshes. They stood in silence waiting for the boat, watching the rain pit the sea with tiny craters. Mother held Jo in her arms.

“Things will change, in time, you know,” she said. “Four years is nothing in a marriage.”

Lucy said, “I don’t know, but there’s not much I can do. There’s Jo, and the war, and David’s condition—how
can
I leave?”

The boat arrived, and Lucy exchanged her mother for three boxes of groceries and five letters. The water was choppy. Mother sat in the boat’s tiny cabin. They waved her around the headland. Lucy felt very lonely.

Jo began to cry. “I don’t want Gran to go away!”

“Nor do I,” said Lucy.

10

G
ODLIMAN AND BLOGGS WALKED SIDE BY SIDE ALONG
the pavement of a bomb-damaged London shopping street. They were a mismatched pair: the stooped, birdlike professor, with pebble-lensed spectacles and a pipe, not looking where he was going, taking short, scurrying steps; and the flat-footed youngster, blond and purposeful, in his detective’s raincoat and melodramatic hat; a cartoon looking for a caption.

Godliman was saying, “I think Die Nadel is well-connected.”

“Why?”

“The only way he could be so insubordinate with impunity. It’s this ‘Regards to Willi’ line. It must refer to Canaris.”

“You think he was pals with Canaris.”

“He’s pals with somebody—perhaps someone more powerful than Canaris was.”

“I have the feeling this is leading somewhere.”

“People who are well-connected generally make those connections at school, or university or staff college. Look at that.”

They were outside a shop that had a huge empty space where once there had been a plate-glass window. A rough sign, hand-painted and nailed to the window-frame, said, “Even more open than usual.”

Bloggs laughed, “I saw one outside a bombed police station: ‘Be good, we are still open.’”

“It’s become a minor art form.”

They walked on. Bloggs said, “So, what if Die Nadel did go to school with someone high in the Wehrmacht?”

“People always have their pictures taken at school. Middleton down in the basement at Kensington—that house where MI6 used to be before the war—he’s got a collection of thousands of photographs of German officers: school photos, binges in the Mess, passing-out parades, shaking hands with Adolf, newspaper pictures—everything.”

“I see,” Bloggs said. “So if you’re right, and Die Nadel had been through Germany’s equivalent of Eton and Sandhurst, we’ve probably got a picture of him.”

“Almost certainly. Spies are notoriously camera-shy, but they don’t become spies in school. It will be a youthful Die Nadel that we find in Middleton’s files.”

They skirted a huge crater outside a barber’s. The shop was intact, but the traditional red-and-white-striped pole lay in shards on the pavement. The sign in the window said, “We’ve had a close shave—come and get one yourself.”

“How will we recognize him? No one has ever seen him,” Bloggs said.

“Yes, they have. At Mrs. Garden’s boarding house in High-gate they know him quite well.”

THE VICTORIAN HOUSE
stood on a hill overlooking London. It was built of red brick, and Bloggs thought it looked angry at the damage Hitler was doing to its city. It was high up, a good place from which to broadcast. Die Nadel would have lived on the top floor. Bloggs wondered what secrets he had transmitted to Hamburg from this place in the dark days of 1940: map references for aircraft factories and steelworks, details of coastal defenses, political gossip, gas masks and Anderson shelters and sandbags, British morale, bomb damage reports, “Well done, boys, you got Christine Bloggs at last—” Shut up.

The door was opened by an elderly man in a black jacket and striped trousers.

“Good morning. I’m Inspector Bloggs, from Scotland Yard. I’d like a word with the householder, please.”

Bloggs saw fear come to the man’s eyes, then a young woman appeared in the doorway behind him and said, “Come in, please.”

The tiled hall smelled of wax polish. Bloggs hung his hat and coat on a stand. The old man disappeared into the depths of the house, and the woman led Bloggs into a lounge. It was expensively furnished in a rich, old-fashioned way. There were bottles of whiskey, gin and sherry on a trolley; all the bottles were unopened. The woman sat on a floral arm-chair and crossed her legs.

“Why is the old man frightened of the police?” Bloggs said.

“My father-in-law is a German Jew. He came here in 1935 to escape Hitler, and in 1940 you put him in a concentration camp. His wife killed herself at the prospect. He has just been released from the Isle of Man. He had a letter from the King, apologizing for the inconvenience to which he had been put.”

Bloggs said, “We don’t have concentration camps.”

“We invented them. In South Africa. Didn’t you know? We go on about our history, but we forget bits. We’re so good at blinding ourselves to unpleasant facts.”

“Perhaps it’s just as well.”

“What?”

“In 1939 we blinded ourselves to the unpleasant fact that we alone couldn’t win a war with Germany—and look what happened.”

“That’s what my father-in-law says. He’s not as cynical as I. What can we do to assist Scotland Yard?”

Bloggs had been enjoying the debate, and now it was with reluctance that he turned his attention to work. “It’s about a murder that took place here four years ago.”

“So long!”

“Some new evidence may have come to light.”

“I know about it, of course. The previous owner was killed by a tenant. My husband bought the house from her executor—she had no heirs.”

“I want to trace the other people who were tenants at that time.”

“Yes.” The woman’s hostility had gone now, and her intelligent face showed the effort of recollection. “When we arrived there were three who had been here before the murder: a retired naval officer, a salesman and a young boy from Yorkshire. The boy joined the Army—he still writes to us. The salesman was called up and he died at sea. I know because two of his five wives got in touch with us! And the Commander is still here.”

“Still here!” That was a piece of luck. “I’d like to see him, please.”

“Surely.” She stood up. “He’s aged a lot. I’ll take you to his room.”

They went up the carpeted stairs to the first door. She said, “While you’re talking to him, I’ll look up the last letter from the boy in the Army.” She knocked on the door. It was more than Bloggs’s landlady would have done, he thought wryly.

A voice called, “It’s open,” and Bloggs went in.

The Commander sat in a chair by the window with a blanket over his knees. He wore a blazer, a collar and a tie, and spectacles. His hair was thin, his moustache grey, his skin loose and wrinkled over a face that might once have been strong. The room was the home of a man living on memories—there were paintings of sailing ships, a sextant and a telescope, and a photograph of himself as a boy aboard
HMS Winchester
.

“Look at this,” he said without turning around. “Tell me why that chap isn’t in the Navy.”

Bloggs crossed to the window. A horse-drawn baker’s van was at the curb outside the house, the elderly horse dipping into its nosebag while the deliveries were made. That “chap” was a woman with short blonde hair, in trousers. She had a magnificent bust. Bloggs laughed. “It’s a woman in trousers,” he said.

“Bless my soul, so it is!” The Commander turned around. “Can’t tell these days, you know. Women in trousers!”

Bloggs introduced himself. “We’ve reopened the case of a murder committed here in 1940. I believe you lived here at the same time as the main suspect, one Henry Faber.”

“Indeed! What can I do to help?”

“How well do you remember Faber?”

“Perfectly. Tall chap, dark hair, well-spoken, quiet. Rather shabby clothes—if you were the kind who judges by appearances, you might well mistake him. I didn’t dislike him—wouldn’t have minded getting to know him better, but he didn’t want that. I suppose he was about your age.”

Bloggs suppressed a smile—he was used to people assuming he must be older simply because he was a detective.

The Commander added, “I’m sure he didn’t do it, you know. I know a bit about character—you can’t command a ship without learning—and if that man was a sex maniac, I’m Hermann Goering.”

Bloggs suddenly connected the blonde in trousers with the mistake about his age, and the conclusion depressed him. He said, “You know, you should always ask to see a policeman’s warrant card.”

The Commander was slightly taken aback. “All right, then, let’s have it.”

Bloggs opened his wallet and folded it to display the picture of Christine. “Here.”

The Commander studied it for a moment, then said, “A very good likeness.”

Bloggs sighed. The old man was very nearly blind.

He stood up. “That’s all, for now,” he said. “Thank you.”

“Any time. Whatever I can do to help. I’m not much value to England these days—you’ve got to be pretty useless to get invalided out of the Home Guard, you know.”

“Good-bye.” Bloggs went out.

The woman was in the hall downstairs. She handed Bloggs a letter. “The boy’s address is a Forces box number,” she said. “Parkin’s his name…no doubt you’ll be able to find out where he is.”

“You knew the Commander would be no use,” Bloggs said.

“I guess not. But a visitor makes his day.” She opened the door.

On impulse, Bloggs said, “Will you have dinner with me?”

A shadow crossed her face. “My husband is still on the Isle of Man.”

“I’m sorry—I thought—”

“It’s all right. I’m flattered.”

“I wanted to convince you we’re not the Gestapo.”

“I know you’re not. A woman alone just gets bitter.”

Bloggs said, “I lost my wife in the bombing.”

“Then you know how it makes you hate.”

“Yes,” said Bloggs. “It makes you hate.” He went down the steps. The door closed behind him. It had started to rain….

IT HAD BEEN RAINING
then too. Bloggs was late home. He had been going over some new material with Godliman. Now he was hurrying, so that he would have half an hour with Christine before she went out to drive her ambulance. It was dark, and the raid had already started. The things Christine saw at night were so awful she had stopped talking about them.

Bloggs was proud of her, proud. The people she worked with said she was better than two men—she hurtled through blacked-out London, driving like a veteran, taking corners on two wheels, whistling and cracking jokes as the city turned to flame around her. Fearless, they called her. Bloggs knew better; she was terrified, but she would not let it show. He knew because he saw her eyes in the morning when he got up and she went to bed; when her guard was down and it was over for a few hours; he knew it was not fearlessness but courage, and he was proud.

It was raining harder when he got off the bus. He pulled down his hat and put up his collar. At a tobacconist’s he bought cigarettes for Christine—she had started smoking recently like a lot of women. The shopkeeper would let him have only five, because of the storage. He put them in a Woolworth’s bakelite cigarette case.

A policeman stopped him and asked for his identity card; another two minutes wasted. An ambulance passed him, similar to the one Christine drove; a requisitioned fruit truck, painted grey.

He began to get nervous as he approached home. The explosions were sounding closer, and he could hear the aircraft clearly. The East End was in for another bruising tonight; he would sleep in the Morrison shelter. There was a big one, terribly close, and he quickened his step. He would eat his supper in the shelter, too.

He turned into his own street, saw the ambulances and the fire engines, and broke into a run.

The bomb had landed on his side of the street, around the middle. It must be close to his own home. Jesus in heaven, not us, no—

There had been a direct hit on the roof, and the house was literally flattened. He raced up to the crowd of people, neighbors and firemen and volunteers. “Is my wife all right? Is she out?
Is she in there?
”

A fireman looked at him. “Nobody’s come out of there, mate.”

Rescuers were picking over the rubble. Suddenly one of them shouted, “Over here!” Then he said, “Jesus, it’s Fearless Bloggs!”

Frederick dashed to where the man stood. Christine was underneath a huge chunk of brickwork. Her face was visible; the eyes were closed.

The rescuer called, “Lifting gear, boys, sharp’s the word.”

Christine moaned and stirred.

“She’s alive!” Bloggs said. He knelt down beside her and got his hand under the edge of the lump of rubble.

The rescuer said, “You won’t shift that, son.”

The brickwork lifted.

“God, you’ll kill yourself,” the rescuer said, and bent down to help.

When it was two feet off the ground they got their shoulders under it. The weight was off Christine now. A third man joined in, and a fourth. They all straightened up together.

Bloggs said, “I’ll lift her out.”

He crawled under the sloping roof of brick and cradled his wife in his arms.

“Fuck me it’s slipping!” someone shouted.

Bloggs scurried out from under with Christine held tightly to his chest. As soon as he was clear the rescuers let go of the rubble and jumped away. It fell back to earth with a sickening thud, and when Bloggs realized that
that
had landed on Christine, he knew she was going to die.

He carried her to the ambulance, and it took off immediately. She opened her eyes again once, before she died, and said, “You’ll have to win the war without me, kiddo.”

More than a year later, as he walked downhill from High-gate into the bowl of London, with the rain on his face mingling with the tears again, he thought the woman in the spy’s house had said a mighty truth: It makes you hate.

In war boys become men and men become soldiers and soldiers get promoted; and this is why Bill Parkin, aged eighteen, late of a boarding house in High-gate, who should have been an apprentice in his father’s tannery at Scarborough, was believed by the Army to be twenty-one, promoted to sergeant, and given the job of leading his advance squad through a hot, dry forest toward a dusty, whitewashed Italian village.

The Italians had surrendered but the Germans had not, and it was the Germans who were defending Italy against the combined British-American invasion. The Allies were going to Rome, and for Sergeant Parkin’s squad it was a long walk.

They came out of the forest at the top of a hill, and lay flat on their bellies to look down on the village. Parkin got out his binoculars and said, “What wouldn’t I fookin’ give for a fookin’ cup of fookin’ tea.” He had taken to drinking and cigarettes and women, and his language was like that of soldiers everywhere. He no longer went to prayer meetings.