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- Herausgeber: Allison & Busby
- Kategorie: Sachliteratur, Reportagen, Biografien
- Sprache: Englisch
The Blitz Detective September, 1940. For thousands of Londoners, the Blitz has started and normal life has abruptly ended - but crime has not. A man's body is discovered in an unmarked van in the back streets of West Ham. Detective Inspector John Jago believes that the death looks suspicious, but then a German bomb obliterates all evidence. War or no war, murder is still murder, and it's Jago's job to find the truth. First published as Direct Hit. The Canning Town Murder As the Blitz takes its nightly toll on London and Hitler prepares his invasion fleet just across the Channel in occupied France, Britain is full of talk about enemy agents. No one is sure who can be trusted. In Canning Town, rescue workers are unsettled when they return to a damaged street and discover a body that shouldn't be there. As Detective Inspector John Jago digs deeper he starts to uncover a trail of deception, betrayal, and romantic entanglements... First Published as Fifth Column. The Custom House Murder As London continues to endure the Blitz, people are calling for vengeance, but once again the night heralds more destruction. When dawn brings the all-clear in Custom House, people disperse, but one man remains - he is dead, stabbed through the heart. Detective Inspector John Jago discovers that the victim was a pacifist. But why, then, was he carrying a loaded revolver in his pocket? First Published as Enemy Action. The Stratford Murder When an air-raid warden seeks to enforce the city's strict blackout rules at a lit-up house in Stratford, she discovers the body of a young woman, strangled to death with a stocking. For Detective Inspector John Jago, the scene brings back memories of the gruesome Soho Strangler - could there be a connection? First published as Firing Line.
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Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2023
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THE BLITZ DETECTIVE SERIES
BOOKS 1, 2, 3, 4
THE BLITZ DETECTIVE THE CANNING TOWN MURDER THE CUSTOM HOUSE MURDER THE STRATFORD MURDER
Mike Hollow
CONTENTS
THE BLITZ DETECTIVE
Mike Hollow
For Catherine and David, my great privilege
PROLOGUE
He was alone, and there was no one to help him. Trapped in the silent space between two rows of graves, he heard every rasp of the madman’s breath. The reek of stale beer soured the air between them as the dark figure grabbed his lapels and pulled him close. The attacker’s face was vicious, and the cap yanked down onto his forehead was shabby. No witness could have identified him, even if there had been one in this gloomy wilderness of the dead. But Hodgson knew him well enough, and wished they had never met.
It was absurd. There were houses just a hundred yards away. He could trace the outline of their roofs and chimneys against the night sky to his right. But in the depths of the blackout, with not a light showing 8anywhere, he might as well be on the moon. The only people out at this time of night would be the ARP wardens and the police, and he could hear no sound of them. They would have plenty of things to attend to.
He knew he was trembling but could not stop it. He was out of his depth, overwhelmed by a familiar surge of panic. His father used to say dogs and horses could smell fear, so maybe people did too. He remembered the two women who’d stopped him on Stratford High Street in the autumn of 1916 and given him a white feather. Perhaps they could smell cowardice on him. He could have made an excuse: he’d been officially ruled unfit for military service in the Great War because of his short-sightedness. But no, he just took the feather without complaint and went on his way. He knew they were right: he was a coward through and through.
Now he heard himself babbling some futile nonsense about reporting this to the police. The man released his hold on one lapel, but only to slap him in the face. The sting bit deep into Hodgson’s cheek, and his glasses rammed painfully into the bridge of his nose. He wanted to cry. It’s just like the way gangsters slap hysterical women in the pictures, he thought. He knows that’s all it takes with someone like me.
‘Not so high and mighty now, are we, Mr Hodgson?’ his tormentor snarled. ‘I think it’s time you started putting a bit more effort into our little arrangement. Don’t you?’
He flung Hodgson back against a gravestone. Its edge cracked into his spine and he slumped to the ground.9
Humiliation. Again. All through his life. His wife might like to think he had some status because he worked for the Ministry of Labour and National Service, but he knew his post was shamingly junior for a man with twenty-four years’ service. After all this time he still wondered if she knew what kind of man she had married. But he knew, only too well. He saw himself, eleven years old, and the gang that set about him on his way home from school, older boys looking for fun in their last term at Water Lane. His West Ham Grammar School uniform made him an easy target. When they snatched his cap and tossed it onto the roof of the nearest house, he understood for the first time in his life that he was a victim. They were just a bunch of fourteen-year-old boys, but he was outnumbered and powerless. Now he was outnumbered by one man.
‘I will, I will,’ he said. ‘It’s just difficult. You don’t understand.’
‘Oh, I understand all right,’ said the man, hauling him back onto his feet.
Hodgson pushed his glasses back up his nose to straighten them. Now he could see the scar that ran three inches down the side of his assailant’s face, just in front of his ear. The man didn’t look old enough for it to be a wound from the last war, and not young enough to have been involved in the current one. He tried not to think how he might have got it.
‘You just look here, Mr Hodgson. You’re a nice man, so I’m going to give you one more chance.’10
The sneer in his voice made his meaning clear. He pulled a crumpled piece of paper from his trouser pocket and stuffed it into the inside pocket of Hodgson’s jacket, then patted him on the chest in mock reassurance.
‘Right, Mr Hodgson, you just fix it for this little lot, and there’s a pound in it for you for each one. Mind you do it right, though. If you don’t, I’ll shop you, or worse. Now you won’t forget, will you?’
Hodgson hurried to give his assurance, relieved that the ordeal was over. Before the words were out of his mouth, he felt the first blow to his stomach, then a second full in his face, a third to the side of his head and another to his stomach. After that he lost count.
He became aware of a boot nudging his left leg.
‘Been celebrating, have we, sir?’
He didn’t know where he was or what time it was. His eyes stung as he strained them open. Two figures stood above him, silhouetted against the lightening sky. He couldn’t see their faces, and took them at first for soldiers, or perhaps a Home Guard patrol, from the outline of their headgear. One of the men squatted down beside him, and now through a blur Hodgson could make out the word ‘Police’ stencilled in white on the front of his steel helmet.
‘I think you’d better come along with us so we can get you tidied up before your missus sees you,’ said the policeman.11
Hodgson closed his eyes. He felt their grip on his arms, one either side, as they got him standing.
Every part of his body ached. He struggled to focus his mind and glanced down at his cheap black suit, crumpled and filthy. How was he going to persuade them he was a respectable civil servant when he must look like a common midnight brawler? Even worse, how was he going to explain all this to Ann?
He had to think of something. He had to find some way to stop that maniac destroying his life.12
CHAPTER ONE
There were times when Jago wished he wasn’t a policeman. Right now he’d like to go out, cross the street and rip the thing off the wall. It had been stuck up there for so long, he reckoned most people probably ignored it, but it still made him feel angry. Everything about it was pompous and patronising, he thought, like the government that had put it there.
He tried not to think about it. That wasn’t why he’d come here. Apart from the view across West Ham Lane to that confounded poster, Rita’s cafe was an oasis, a sanctuary of friendly welcome and good home cooking. Today, like time without number in the past, he’d come here for respite from the job, from crime, from the world.14
He saw Rita approaching, cloth in hand and pencil behind her ear as usual. She wore her years well, he thought. A woman of a certain age, as the French put it – in other words fortyish, like himself, but already widowed for twenty-two years and with a daughter of twenty-three. In her floral-patterned apron and with her headscarf tied in a turban, she treated her customers as though they’d just popped round to her house for a cup of tea in the kitchen.
‘Afternoon, Mr Jago,’ she said. ‘Enjoying the view?’
‘No,’ he said. ‘Can’t you get the council to take that poster down? It annoys me.’
She peered out of the window. The brown paper tape that criss-crossed the glass had been up for a year now and was beginning to peel away at the corners. She rubbed off a small smear with her cloth.
‘I’m sorry about the state of these windows. I’ll have to put some new tape up, I think, although why we bother I don’t know. A year at war and we’ve never had a single bomb down this street. But what’s wrong with the poster, dear? You mean that red one on the wall over there? It’s in a bit of a state, isn’t it?’
‘Yes, but unfortunately you can still just about make out what it says. Look.’
Rita read the words slowly.
‘“Your courage, your cheerfulness, your resolution will bring us victory.” What’s wrong with that, then?’
‘Everything, I’d say. What idiot thinks you can win a war by being cheerful? They should try spending a 15few weeks in a trench up to their knees in mud, blood and rats like your Walter and I did. Then we’d see how cheerful they were. And look: every time it says “your” they’ve put a line under it. They might as well put one under “us”, too, and make it absolutely clear: we’re the rulers and you’re the ruled. It’s a wonder one of those communists from the docks hasn’t crept out in the night with a pot of paint and done it for them. What do these Whitehall pen-pushers use for brains?’
‘Not your favourite poster then, Mr Jago? Honestly, I’m surprised at you. Coming out with things like that, and you a servant of the Crown. If people hear you talking like that you’ll have to arrest yourself.’
‘Don’t worry, Rita: for your ears only. I don’t go round saying that sort of thing to everyone, but I know I can let off a bit of steam with you.’
‘I’ll go up the road to the town hall if you like and ask them to scrape it off the wall, tell them it’s annoying my customers and ruining my trade.’
‘To be honest, Rita, it wouldn’t surprise me if West Ham Borough Council had left it there on purpose. Think about it: you’ve got the world’s worst propaganda poster, dreamt up by Chamberlain and his Tory government, and a council controlled by Labour for twenty years. They probably left it there deliberately to make a political point.’
‘I think you’re reading too much into it. And in any case, the weather’s nearly done it for you – it’ll be falling off the wall soon.’16
She wiped the top of his table, then stood back and took a notepad from her apron pocket and the pencil from behind her ear.
‘Now then, what can I get you? A spot of late lunch?’
‘Just a pot of tea for two, please, and a couple of your delightful rock cakes. I’m waiting for my colleague to join me – he’s just popped to the gents.’
‘I’ll bring the tea and cakes over when I see him come back. Is it the young man I saw you come in with? I don’t think I’ve seen him in here before.’
‘Yes, that’s my assistant, Detective Constable Cradock. I’m taking him to the football this afternoon. Familiarising him with the local culture, you might say.’
‘Well, you’ve got very good weather for it; I hope you win. This constable of yours, he looks a nice young man. Might suit my Emily. Is he spoken for?’
‘Sorry, Rita, I have no idea – and if I had I wouldn’t tell you.’
‘I expect you miss your Sergeant Clark, don’t you? He’s back in the army, isn’t he?’
‘Yes, he was called up when war was declared, with all the other reserves. We’re so short of manpower these days I can’t get a detective sergeant to replace him, so I have to make do with a constable instead.’
‘Same for me, dear,’ said Rita. ‘The last girl I had working here packed it in. Said she could get better money doing munitions work. Now I’m stuck with that Phyllis over there. Too slow to catch cold, if you ask 17me. Young people today don’t know what hard work is, do they, Mr Jago?’
‘It’s not like it was when we were young, Rita, that’s for sure. I look at Cradock sometimes and think I don’t understand him. And it’s not just a generation thing. It’s the war: if you lived through it you see things differently, simple as that.’
‘Too true,’ said Rita with a sigh. ‘Twenty-two years now since my Walter was killed, and it’s with me every day. But to most people I’m just another war widow, and who wants to think about that? Present company excluded, of course: you’ve always been very understanding. Sometimes I think I should have gone away, lived somewhere else, started all over again, but somehow I never did. Don’t know why.’
‘Because people like you and me belong here, Rita, that’s why.’
‘I suppose so. No place like home, eh? Still, there’s no point getting miserable, is there? That doesn’t help anyone. Look, I’ve brought you the paper to look at while you’re waiting. Yesterday’s Express. I know you like to see it.’
She handed him that week’s Stratford Express with a smile, then pointed at the wall behind him.
‘Is that a new hat you’ve got there?’
‘That’s very observant of you, Rita. You should have been a detective.’
She laughed.
‘Not me, dear. I’m not clever enough. It’s just that 18you’re always so nicely turned out, not like most of the men round here, so I notice what you’re wearing.’
Jago took the hat down from the hook on the wall and smoothed it with his jacket sleeve.
‘You’re right. I got it last week. It’s the first I’ve bought for five years, and I plan to wear it for the next five at least.’
The hat was a charcoal grey fedora with the brim snapped down at the front. He didn’t like to think what the men at the station would say if they knew what he’d paid for it. Even a detective inspector’s salary didn’t give much room for self-indulgence. If he’d been a family man they might call it scandalous, but he had neither wife nor children, and his conscience was clear.
‘Very nice too,’ said Rita. ‘You always look a proper gentleman.’
She set off back to the kitchen, and Jago replaced his hat on the hook. He was peckish, and Cradock had not yet appeared. Get a move on, boy, he thought: I want my cup of tea.
Most of the Saturday lunchers had gone by now, but the cafe was still busy. Rita had the wireless on as usual, and beneath the customers’ chatter he could make out the mellow voice of Hutch, crooning that it would be a lovely day tomorrow. All part of the national drive for cheerfulness, no doubt, he thought. But on a day like this it was almost possible to believe it. A week into September already, and still unseasonably warm: real seaside weather. Not that anyone was allowed within miles of the coast any more.19
Cradock came into view at last.
‘Come along, lad, I’m starving,’ said Jago. ‘What were you doing in there? I thought you’d set up camp for the duration.’
‘Sorry, guv’nor,’ said Cradock.
‘Well, sit down. Your tea’s on its way.’
Moments later Rita arrived with their order and carefully set out the cups and saucers, teapot, and strainer on the table, followed by two large rock cakes, each on a white china plate.
‘There you are, gentlemen,’ she said. ‘Give me a shout if there’s anything else you need.’
She gave Jago a theatrical wink and departed. Jago saw the look of alarm on Cradock’s face.
‘Don’t worry, she’s only joking. Rita and I go back a long way.’
He poured the two cups of tea and pushed one across to Cradock, then spooned sugar into his own from the chipped glass bowl in the middle of the table. He’d cut down from two sugars to one in January, when the rationing came in – doing his bit for the war effort – but his first taste of the drink was still agreeably sweet. He smacked his lips and gave a satisfied sigh.
‘So how’s your cheerfulness today, Peter?’ he said, with a sideways nod towards the window.
Cradock followed his gaze and spotted the offending slogan.
‘Reckon I’d feel cheerful if I was in the poster business, sir,’ he said. ‘Whoever prints them must make a packet. 20There’s always some who do in a war, though, isn’t there? It’s an ill wind that blows no one a silver lining.’
Jago inclined his head and stared into Cradock’s face.
‘And in English?’
‘Sir?’
‘Never mind: I got the gist.’
Cradock took a bite of his cake.
‘You were right about these rock cakes, sir,’ he said. ‘Very tasty, very sweet.’
Jago rolled his eyes. ‘Leave the catchphrases to the comedians,’ he said. ‘You’re a police officer, not a music hall act. Do try to remember that. Too much time listening to the wireless, that’s your trouble.’
Cradock seemed to be concentrating too hard on pushing cake into his mouth to notice what his boss was saying. Jago picked up the Express and studied the front page. A couple of minutes later he tutted and lowered the paper to address Cradock again.
‘Have you seen what the local rag has to say about those air raids last weekend?’
Cradock shook his head, his mouth still full.
‘They make it sound like an entertainment. Listen: “On Saturday and Monday afternoons many people had the thrilling experience of witnessing aerial combats in the district.” Thrilling experience? They won’t find it so entertaining if the Germans start bombing us properly. And here: it says, “An Anderson shelter in which five people were sheltering was blown to pieces.” Very nicely put. What it means is that five people were blown to 21pieces in their own back garden, but they don’t say that. What are they going to say when it’s five hundred people a night being blown to bits?’
‘You don’t think that’ll really happen, do you, guv’nor?’ said Cradock, trying to catch the crumbs that fell from his mouth as he spoke. ‘I heard something on the news yesterday about Mr Churchill saying the air raids haven’t been half as bad as expected and the sirens don’t actually mean anyone’s in real danger. Something like that, anyway.’
‘So you think we’re past the worst of it, do you?’ said Jago.
‘Well, I’m not sure, sir, but it sounds quite positive.’
‘Yes,’ said Jago, ‘like that Ministry of Information advert they had in the papers. Do you remember it? “I keep a cool head, I take cover, and I remember the odds are thousands to one against my being hurt.” So all we need to do is keep a cool head, and everything will be fine. And be cheerful, of course. It’ll be some other poor soul who cops it, not me.’
He gave a contemptuous snort and leant closer across the table, lowering his voice.
‘All I’m saying is I think things might get worse before they get better. Churchill may be right, the raids may not have been as bad as the government expected – I mean, before the war some people reckoned we’d have fifty thousand dead on the first day. But that doesn’t mean they won’t get worse in the future, especially now Hitler’s only twenty miles away across the Channel.’22
‘Well, best to look on the bright side, wouldn’t you say, sir?’
‘Oh, undoubtedly,’ said Jago. ‘Undoubtedly.’
He folded the Express and laid it on the table. It was hard work educating Cradock. The boy wasn’t a patch on Clark, but then everyone had to start somewhere. He blew onto his tea to cool it and took a sip, gazing thoughtfully up at his new purchase on the wall.
Definitely a good investment, he thought. Being able to choose what he wore was still one of the best things about plain-clothes work. Two years in the army and then more as a PC on the beat was enough uniform for a lifetime, as far as he was concerned. It took a bit of effort, of course. A hat, for example, could either work for a man or against him. The fedora, he was sure, worked for him.
The same couldn’t be said, he thought, of the man who caught his eye across Cradock’s right shoulder. He was a broad-shouldered type, hunched in conversation over a table a few yards away. Jago only had a back view of him, but he could see that the man’s hat, a trilby of sorts, was a very poor choice. Too narrow in the brim for his ears, the only effect it achieved was to draw attention to the way they stuck out on either side of his head. Like handles on a vase, thought Jago.
To compound the offence, the man was wearing his hat while sitting at a table and eating. Rita’s might not be the Ritz, but even so, that sort of behaviour marked him out as someone with a severe deficiency in taste, or perhaps in upbringing. Jago began to watch him, and 23noticed the aggressive gestures he was making towards the man sitting across the table from him. Whoever he was, the trilby man was no shrinking violet.
The other man presented a very different picture. He was facing Jago, so his expression was clearly visible. This one seemed to have better manners. He’d removed his cheap-looking black bowler, but he clutched it to his chest, both hands gripping the brim. It made him look as though he were praying, thought Jago. He was chubby, with blotched skin, and he looked uncomfortable in his very ordinary-looking dark suit and stiff collar. A junior bank clerk, perhaps, not far into his twenties. His face was that of a scared rabbit.
Cradock’s voice cut through Jago’s observations, curtailing them.
‘What time’s the kick-off, sir? For the football, I mean.’
Jago shifted his gaze from the two strangers back to Cradock.
‘Quarter past three,’ he said. ‘No need to rush your tea. We’ll be there in good time. The crowds are so small these days they probably won’t start till we get there.’
Cradock looked relieved: he was still busy with his cake.
‘And that reminds me, Peter. Here’s another tip for you,’ said Jago.
‘Yes, sir? What’s that?’
‘It’s this: always take the lady’s seat, unless there’s a lady with you.’
He was amused to see the puzzled look that crossed Cradock’s broad face.24
‘I’m not sure I follow you, guv’nor. You don’t get seats at a football ground, not unless you own the club.’ He thought for a moment. ‘You don’t get ladies either, for that matter.’
Jago gave him a patient smile. ‘Not at the match: I mean here. It’s something my father told me. If ever you take a lady out to dinner, give her the seat facing into the restaurant. Or the cafe, of course.’
‘Why’s that, sir?’
‘To give her the view of the room. I think it’s what he regarded as gentlemanly. Mind you, I don’t think he ever had enough money to take ladies out to dinner, certainly not his wife. What I mean is, if you want to know what’s going on in a place like this, take the lady’s seat. That’s how I know everything that’s happening behind your back and you don’t know anything.’
Cradock was about to turn round, but the inspector motioned him to stay put.
Jago was focused again on the timid rabbit-face, who now looked even more agitated. The trilby man was moving to rise from his chair. Jago did the same.
‘Stay where you are; I’ll be back in a moment,’ he said to Cradock, and slid out from behind the table. He timed his move so that he crossed the man’s path and brushed against his shoulder.
‘Very sorry,’ he said to the stranger. ‘Wasn’t looking where I was going.’
The man turned for a moment and uttered an indecipherable grunt that Jago took to be an 25acknowledgement of the apology, then walked on. Apart from the ears, and a scar on the left side of the man’s face, there was nothing particularly conspicuous about him. But Jago took a mental photograph of his face nonetheless. Old copper’s habit, he supposed.
He walked on past the agitated rabbit. Left alone at his table, the young man was staring straight ahead, still clutching his hat, but now as if it were the steering wheel of a car, out of control and heading for a smash.
CHAPTER TWO
Not so long ago she’d have given him a clip round the ear for talking back. But not now: working down the docks had changed him. She edged through the gap between the back of his chair and the kitchen wall and picked up the bottle, then wiped away the circle of milk with her dishcloth.
‘Not on the table, Robert,’ she said. ‘You know I don’t like it on the table.’
He looked at her as though she had just landed from another planet.
‘What’s the matter with you, Mum? Who cares where it goes?’
‘It’s manners,’ she said. ‘Putting the milk bottle on the table like that is common.’27
‘So? What’s wrong with being common? That’s what we are. We’re working people, Mum, not a bunch of idle toffs putting our feet up in a palace.’
Irene pulled a chair back from the table and sat down.
‘I do wish you wouldn’t snap at me like that, Robert,’ she said. ‘If your father were here—’
‘Yes, well he’s not, is he?’ said Robert. ‘Perhaps if he had more sense he would be.’
‘Don’t talk about your dad like that. He’s risking his life out there, serving his country.’
‘No, he’s not, Mum. He’s just doing what he’s told, so some fat capitalists can get richer, that’s what it is. They’re the ones feathering their nests out of this war, not the likes of us.’
‘You think you know it all, don’t you? Is that what you really think? You sound like one of those leaflets you bring home. It’s not right. It’s not respectful. How can you talk like that when you’ve got your dad at sea and Joe in the army? They’re doing their duty.’
‘More fool them, if you ask me,’ said Robert. ‘It’s just one bunch of imperialists fighting another, and the sooner we get rid of the lot of them the better. I’ll have no part in it.’
‘You won’t say that if you get called up.’
‘But I won’t get called up, will I? Reserved occupation. They need people like me to keep the docks working.’
Irene wiped the edge of the table. He had an answer for everything.
‘So what about this evening: are you in?’28
‘No.’
‘Where are you going?’
‘Never you mind, Mum: just out with some friends.’
‘I wish you wouldn’t,’ she said. ‘They’re not the sort of people you should be mixing with. They’re trouble, and they’ll get you in trouble.’
‘If there’s any trouble it won’t be me who comes off worst.’
He pushed his plate away and stood up to go. Irene felt a familiar ache in her legs: she’d been on her feet too long.
‘Get Billy in, will you, love?’ she said. ‘He’s out in the backyard fiddling with his bike.’
Robert went to the back door and summoned his younger brother. Billy came into the kitchen, wiping his hands on a rag.
‘Yes, Mum, what is it?’
‘Just want to know whether you’re in for tea tonight, love, that’s all,’ said Irene.
‘No, I’m going out as soon as I’ve got the bike fixed. I’m on duty tonight too.’
Irene looked at him but said nothing. There was no point saying she was worried: that was something mothers did and boys didn’t understand. But she was. In different ways, she was worried about all her boys. She ruffled his hair. He was sixteen now, but he still let her do that.
‘OK, love. Thanks,’ she said finally. Billy went back to his bike.29
She cleared the table and took the dishes through to the scullery to wash them. The sun was glaring through the open window, and the afternoon was getting hot. She felt tired. She missed Jim, and it wasn’t easy, what with work and the boys to look after and everything else.
From the scullery she heard a loud knock at the front door. She walked back the length of their cramped terraced house to see who it was. The windowless passage was gloomy but refreshingly cooler.
She opened the door. Like all the others in Westfield Street, the house opened straight onto the narrow street.
‘Oh, hello, Edna,’ she said. She was surprised to see her neighbour there. If Edna wanted her she’d normally call over the back fence, not knock on the front door. ‘What are you—’
Her voice faded as she saw the expression on Edna’s face. It was strained. As though she were about to cry.
Irene thought Edna must be in some kind of difficulty, in need of help.
‘Is everything all right?’ she said. Her neighbour made no reply.
Then Irene saw the boy standing behind Edna on the street. Younger than Robert, not even shaving yet, but wearing a uniform. Not in the forces, though. She saw the letters ‘GPO’ on his badge: a post office telegram boy. He was holding an envelope and looked scared.
Edna forced herself to speak.
‘I’m ever so sorry, dear,’ she said gently, stepping forward. ‘This lad knocked on my door and asked if I’d 30come round with him – he was worried you might be on your own. He’s got a telegram for you.’
Irene let out a soft gasp and bit her lip. She felt faint, and steadied herself with her left hand on the door frame as her head began to spin.
She was aware of Edna reaching for her as her knees gave way, and then nothing.
CHAPTER THREE
A camel trying to get through the eye of a needle. DC Peter Cradock had always thought this an odd expression. He had never had occasion to use it himself, but it came to mind now.
Jago had led the way from the cafe, threading through a maze of side streets until they reached the Barking Road, and then turning off it into Priory Road, where a terrace of small Victorian houses stared bleakly at the back of the football ground. The afternoon sunshine did little to enliven the rust-pocked sheets of corrugated iron that perched on drab concrete to form the back wall of the east stand.
The two men joined the crowd of spectators edging towards the entrance gates, slots in the wall just wide 32enough to allow one person through. The eye of the needle. Cradock followed Jago into one of the slots. It was dark and dank inside, like a prison. They shuffled through the restricted space in single file until they reached the turnstile. Jago paid for both of them, handing the money into a gloomy booth. The turnstile clanked as they pushed through, and they were into the ground.
‘Welcome to the Chicken Run,’ said Jago.
Cradock could see why people called it that. The stand was decidedly unimpressive: a flimsy-looking timber structure, just one storey, roofed with more of the same corrugated iron. Over on the far side of the pitch, however, he could see a grander affair: a two-tier stand that towered over the rest of the ground, with an overhanging roof to protect those standing below from the rain. It looked as though that was where the money had been spent, and it seemed to Cradock that it was like the whole of London. The west side was all wealth and fancy accommodation, where you could look down on the rest, but over in the east people had to make do with a run-down old shack that looked as though it would collapse if you sneezed at it.
They found a place to stand on the wooden terracing where they could get a good view of the pitch. It wasn’t difficult: the place was almost deserted. Down at the front, boys draped their arms over the low wall that bounded the stand a few feet from the touchline, impatient for the match to begin. Here and there a younger one stood on an upturned wooden 33orange box, a relic of the days when greengrocers still had oranges to sell, thought Cradock. The detective constable had little interest in football, but even he knew this was nothing like the number of people who would have been at a match before the war, even in the second division. Everything had been cut back now, with the country split into northern and southern leagues so the teams didn’t have to travel so far, which was how West Ham came to be playing Tottenham for the second week running. Even the football was rationed now, he thought.
He turned round and looked at the patchy crowd behind him: flat caps and frayed clothes in all directions, the uniform of the hard-faced men who worked in the maze of grimy docks and factories that sprawled north from the Thames. He wondered whether it was the risk of air raids or the lure of overtime in these difficult days that was keeping the rest away.
The match kicked off on time at a quarter past three, and the crowd, such as it was, soon unleashed its raucous vocal accompaniment to the ebb and flow of play. Cradock watched dutifully. He’d identified himself as a Tottenham supporter back in June, but that was just to show interest when Jago seemed so pleased that West Ham had won the War Cup. Now, though, he wasn’t sure whether his guv’nor was passionate about football at all. Even here at a match he was just standing there, watching thoughtfully. At one point Cradock even fancied he’d detected a hint of sadness in Jago’s expression. However, 34when West Ham took the lead in the first half he noticed a quiet smile of satisfaction crossing Jago’s lips. Cradock wondered why he didn’t jump and shout like some of the men around them, but he felt it wasn’t his place to ask.
The referee blew his whistle to mark half-time.
‘Good game so far, eh?’ said Jago, a little more animated now as he turned to face Cradock. ‘We might beat you again – that’d be a turn-up for the books.’
‘Oh, definitely, guv’nor,’ said Cradock. He couldn’t think of an intelligent comment to make on the game, but hoped Jago would take this as the subdued silence of a fan watching his side losing.
By the time play resumed for the second half he was already looking forward to going home. But then Tottenham equalised, and contrary to his expectations he felt a faint stirring of interest. Before long, the tables were turned, with a hat-trick for Tottenham’s Burgess. The score was now West Ham 1, Tottenham 4.
Cradock checked his watch. It was ten to five: only about ten minutes to go.
‘Looks like your prediction might have been a bit premature, sir,’ he said. The West Ham supporters in the east stand had gone quiet. On the South Bank terraces to their left, however, he could see Spurs fans celebrating, doing their best to make a creditable noise with their shouting and their rattles, despite their depleted numbers.
He was beginning to think he might finally enjoy the occasion, when the roar of the supporters suddenly trailed off into silence.35
A murmur of sound seemed to come from below their shouting and melt it away, like news of a death spreading through a room. It was the eerie moan of an air-raid siren.
Cradock turned to Jago.
‘Another false alarm, do you think?’
Before Jago could answer, the referee blew three blasts on his whistle: he was stopping the game. There would be no more football today, and the evacuation of the stadium began.
Cradock and Jago found themselves back on Priory Road, along with several hundred other spectators who had left the football ground with them. The way the crowd behaved seemed to be consistent with what they’d seen and heard reported over recent days and weeks. Many of those who spilt out of the exit gates started running immediately, fathers keeping a firm grip on sons as they sought safety. Others moved away into the neighbouring streets with less haste. Jago assumed these were the ones who had developed a more relaxed attitude over so many months of hearing alerts that proved harmless, and who hadn’t been shaken from it by the intermittent bombing of recent days. Just yesterday there had been a raid, but it hadn’t come as far north of the docks as this, so they probably thought there was no immediate danger.
‘Back to the station, sir?’ said Cradock.
‘Yes, I think so,’ said Jago. ‘There’ll be no buses running now the alert’s sounded, so we’ll have to go on 36foot, but we can cut through the back streets and take the shortest route possible. With any luck it’ll just be another false alarm.’
They turned right into Castle Street, where uniformed constables and ARP wardens were directing the visiting Tottenham supporters to the nearest public shelters, then headed north past the main entrance to the football ground. Eventually they came to the turning Jago was looking for.
‘Right, follow me,’ he said, turning left into St George’s Road. Cradock stayed close behind him: he knew the general direction in which they must head, but he didn’t know these streets as well as Jago did. He was glad it wasn’t dark yet.
It was quieter now: most people here seemed to have taken shelter. They hurried along the deserted street and soon they were in Ham Park Road. As they entered it Cradock hesitated. A sound he had not heard before was filling the air. It was coming from behind him, from the south, down by the river and the docks. He turned to face it. In the first second there was nothing to explain the noise, but in the next he saw it. A swarm of aeroplanes was approaching, tiny shapes in the sky, too many to count. The low, pulsing drone of their engines grew steadily louder as they got nearer.
He stepped into the road to get a better view. He knew his aircraft recognition skills weren’t up to much, but he recognised the distinctive outline of the Dornier bomber, the one they called the flying pencil, and he saw 37other large planes that he assumed must be bombers too. Scores of smaller, silvery shapes roamed the sky above them: fighters, he thought.
‘I don’t believe it,’ he said. ‘There’s hundreds of them. Germans. How did they get through?’
Jago looked up just as the first black dots began to tumble from the bombers and make their rushing descent to the earth. Then came the crump of explosions, and smoke billowing from somewhere in the region of the docks, a couple of miles away. It was bigger than the previous day’s raid, bigger than any they’d seen since the war started. And this time it wasn’t stopping at the docks. The planes were heading inland from the river, straight for them, leaving a trail of blasts that crept rapidly northwards. Before they could move, the dark shapes were above them.
A deafening noise broke out immediately behind them. The two anti-aircraft guns in West Ham Park had opened fire. Shrapnel began to rain down on the road and the roofs of the nearby houses.
‘Watch out!’ yelled Jago, dragging Cradock away by the arm. He glimpsed an archway over a pair of gates a few yards away and hauled Cradock into it. He pushed him down to the ground and dropped beside him.
They heard the scream of the falling bombs and felt the ground shake as they landed on nearby streets. Cradock peered out from the minimal shelter of the archway, then shrank back as the jagged blast of high explosives ripped through the evening air. A bomb had 38landed just a hundred yards or so down the road.
‘Should we try to get under cover, sir?’ he shouted above the din. ‘There was a surface shelter back there.’
‘Not likely. I saw them being built. Death traps: just brick walls and a dirty great concrete roof on top, ready to crush you. You’ll never get me in one of them.’
As the words left Jago’s lips he felt suddenly cold. There was a tension in his stomach that he recognised and fought to suppress.
He shouted at Cradock.
‘Keep your head down, you fool.’
‘Yes, sir,’ said Cradock, pressing himself deeper into the archway and wishing he had a tin helmet with him.
The roar of the planes began to recede. Now the loudest sound they could hear was the clanging bells of fire engines. Acrid smoke began to drift across the street.
Jago got to his feet, followed by Cradock. His heart was thumping in his chest. He breathed deeply to calm himself down, not daring to speak lest Cradock hear a tremor in his voice. He made a play of brushing the dust from his suit and wiping his shoes clean on the back of his trouser legs as he composed himself.
‘Is that yours, sir?’ said Cradock.
Jago followed his pointing finger and spotted a sad-looking object that was lying in the road at his feet. It was a hat. His hat, lost and crushed as he dived for cover. He picked it up and examined it with a brief sigh, then stuffed it onto his head. The fortunes of war, he thought. Now it would just have to be a 39battered survivor, like him. He turned to Cradock.
‘Right, my lad, it looks like they’re going, so we’d better hop it too. And next time you see the Luftwaffe coming for you, don’t stand gawping at them: hit the deck.’
‘Yes, sir,’ said Cradock. He hadn’t been bombed before, and he hoped to make a better impression on the inspector if it happened again.
‘Where to now?’ he added.
‘Back to the station. Looks like you can say goodbye to your evening off.’
With a quick backward glance the men stumbled from the shelter of the archway and continued on their way to the police station. The war was now in their backyard. A long-buried anxiety began to claw its way back to the surface of Jago’s mind at the thought of what the night might bring. He felt haunted, and he recognised the ghosts.
CHAPTER FOUR
The pedals were heavy, and Billy could already feel sweat trickling down the small of his back. It was ten past nine, but the evening air was still holding out against the chill of night. His calf muscles tightened as he forced the juddering contraption forward.
He was still struggling to cope with the shock. He felt ashamed and angry with himself for leaving his mum like that, for using his ARP duty as an excuse to abandon her, but he couldn’t face it. He didn’t know what to say or do to help her.
He kicked down with one foot, then with the other, with rhythmic force, the only way he could find to quell the confusion in his head. Sorting that out would have to wait. He’d left the Boy Scouts when he 41started work two years ago, but their values were still engrained in him. He knew his duty must come first, and that was to get the message through to the control centre. He had to stay calm.
He tried to think about something else, about better times. About the bike project.
When they’d started, the idea had been exciting. Rob said he’d help him build one out of any old bits and pieces they could lay their hands on, and then they’d cycle down to Southend for days out. They would have done, too, if they hadn’t run out of time. But that was a year ago: now everything had changed. Southend was a Defence Area, and he’d heard the whole coast was sealed off, right up to King’s Lynn. No visitors allowed.
Rob had changed too. Not fun to be with any more, more like a lodger than a brother. Billy didn’t understand why.
He pushed at the pedals, straining to build up more speed. He wished he could have got the three-speed gears working and found some drop handlebars: these old sit-up-and-beg ones were useless.
If it weren’t for the terrifying noise it would have been like riding through a ghost town. Normally on a Saturday night there’d be people out on the street, especially after a warm day like today. You’d see them having a chat, rolling in and out of the pubs, having a good time. But not tonight. The air was full of those throbbing engines, just like this afternoon. More bombers.
He couldn’t believe they were coming back for a 42second go in the same day. The whistle of falling bombs that he could hear and the blasts that shook the ground as they landed seemed to be coming from everywhere between here and the river. Anyone with any sense would be in their shelters. He pictured his mum, huddled in the damp little Anderson shelter in their backyard where he’d left her, and muttered a hasty prayer for her towards the sky. He wasn’t sure it would be heard through this racket, even if there was someone there to hear it. The Luftwaffe certainly wouldn’t take any notice.
Bombs were falling somewhere out of sight in the streets to his right, but Plaistow Road was clear, so he pressed on. The tall outline of the Railway Tavern loomed into view on his left. The pub and all the houses around it were dark, their blank, blacked-out windows like the closed eyes of a corpse. The whole street looked dead.
In another year and a bit, Billy would be eighteen, old enough to go into any pub he chose and buy a drink. But he’d be old enough to be called up too. And unlike Rob, he wouldn’t be able to dodge it. The thought of going into the forces began to unsettle him again. He told himself to focus on the job in hand.
He turned right into Corporation Street and immediately lurched into the gutter as a grey-painted requisitioned taxicab with a ladder on its roof rattled past, hauling a trailer pump. In the same moment he saw why it was here: just down the street there were buildings blazing. The Auxiliary Fire Service men were already out 43of the cab and manhandling the pump into position.
It was clear that more than one bomb had hit the street. Twice he had to get off his bike and haul it through the obstacles. He could see the school was still standing, but across the road shops and houses he’d known all his life were now ragged heaps of bricks, slates, and unidentifiable debris, spiked with blackened timbers snapped like matchsticks.
He reached Manor Road and was able to cycle again until he was forced to make another detour, this time along the edge of the cemetery. In the shadows he could just make out the rows of gravestones. They all faced away from the road, as if finally turning their backs on the living. Billy remembered how it had felt when he was a kid, thinking of all those dead people lying just feet away. He tried to block the thought from his mind.
He turned right as soon as he could, but then had to stop again. The greengrocer’s on the corner had taken a hit: it was just a slew of rubble spanning the road. Flames curled through the drifting smoke. He didn’t fancy climbing over the top of that, but there was a turning ahead. Maybe he could bypass the obstruction.
Dragging the front wheel of his bike round, he headed off down a side street, then turned into another to try to find his way back. The street was darker than the one he’d just left: there were no fires here. He’d cycled half the length of it before he realised he was in Jasmine Street, and that was a dead end. He stopped. His shirt 44was soaked in sweat, and he felt so frustrated he wanted to kick something.
He was about to turn back the way he’d come when he saw someone standing in the shadows at the far end of the street. A man, wearing overalls. He was gesturing with his arm, beckoning. He stepped into the road, and Billy could make out the large white letter ‘W’ on the front of his black steel helmet: an air-raid warden.
‘Come over here, lad,’ the man shouted. ‘What are you doing out in this?’
Billy approached and pushed his arm forward so that the warden could see his armband.
‘ARP messenger,’ he said. ‘I’ve got to get to Rainford Lane, to the control centre. I’ve got a message to deliver.’
‘Perfect,’ said the warden. ‘Then you can take one for me too. Come over here.’
He turned away and headed for a small black vehicle parked at the side of the road. Billy propped his bike with one pedal on the kerb and followed. It looked like a tradesman’s van, but there was no writing on the side. He thought maybe someone had abandoned it because of the raid, but then he made out the figure of the driver sitting in the cab.
‘You squeamish, son?’ said the warden.
‘Course not,’ said Billy.
‘Then take a quick look at this. It needs reporting.’
The warden opened the offside cab door and motioned Billy towards it. The driver didn’t look up. Surely he can’t be sleeping through this racket, thought Billy. Perhaps 45he’d been caught by a blast and knocked out, or worse. He might need help. But the van looked undamaged: even the windscreen was intact. It definitely wasn’t a bomb that had stopped it.
He peered into the cab. The warden switched on his hooded lamp and directed a little light over Billy’s shoulder.
Now he could see the man clearly. He looked about fifty, and was dressed in a suit, so perhaps not a tradesman after all. He was sitting at the steering wheel, his head slumped forward slightly onto his chest. His hands hung limply in his lap.
The next thing Billy saw made him gasp. It was the blood: on the man’s wrists, on his clothes, glistening in the lamplight.
He turned back to the warden.
‘Is he …?’
‘As a doornail,’ said the warden. ‘And I fancy it wasn’t the Germans’ work. We need to get the police here. As soon as you get down to the control centre, ring them up and tell them there’s been a suspicious death. Give them my name: Ron Davies. Now get on your way.’
Billy returned to his bike, his mind running through what he’d just witnessed. It was the first time he’d seen a dead body. The first time he’d had to call the police. He knew that was what you did if you found a body, but at the same time something about it didn’t make sense.
There was no time to puzzle it out. He got on his bike and went back the way he’d come, away from the dead end. He still had to find a way round the blocked 46road. He tried another turning, and this time the road looked clear. He forced the bike up to what passed for speed again. The dead man’s face was fixed in his mind. Then, as if of its own will, his dad’s face seemed to float in and take its place. He tried to get them both out of his head, but they just got mixed up together.
In the sky over East London the searchlights criss-crossed in search of the enemy. Billy glanced up at them, but couldn’t see any planes. He felt powerless, frustrated. It was then that the anger crept up on him again, grabbing at his throat, choking him. Inside his head he was raging at his dad for being a fool. He hated him. He hated the Germans. He hated the government. He hated the whole world. As he neared the control centre he was grateful for the smoke that cut into his eyes. It would give a reason for the tears that blurred his sight.
CHAPTER FIVE
Detective Inspector Jago peered ahead through the windscreen, scanning the road for hazards as best he could. It was past ten o’clock at night, but with so many buildings ablaze the darkness wasn’t the problem: it was the smoke swirling around the car like fog, erasing familiar landmarks, that was giving him trouble. At times the vehicle’s masked headlamps could barely make out the white safety markings painted on the kerb. There were fire engines everywhere, their hoses snaking across the roads in all directions, further impeding progress for anyone else trying to get through. He leant forward, his hand gripping the dashboard. He was beginning to regret letting Cradock drive, but he’d decided the boy needed the experience. He might have 48to do a journey like this on his own any time soon, and Jago wouldn’t trust him to find his way round the back streets of Plaistow in these conditions, especially when any landmarks he might know could be wiped off the map by a bomb at any moment.
‘Watch where you’re going, lad,’ he snapped. ‘Look at the size of that hole in the road there.’
Cradock sat hunched over the steering wheel, nosing the car forward.
‘Doing my best, guv’nor. It’s a bit tricky with all this going on.’
‘You can say that again,’ said Jago. ‘But I don’t want my car going down a bomb crater.’
He wished he still had Clark to work with. There had always been something solid about Clark. Cradock was willing enough, and might make a decent detective one day, but Jago missed Clark’s experience. He had good judgement too. The kind of man you could rely on, especially at times like this. Jago hadn’t seen him since November, when the detective sergeant had been recalled to the colours, but he’d celebrated with a small whisky on hearing in June that Clark was one of the lucky ones who’d got back safely from Dunkirk.
The car bumped over a fire hose and snapped him back to the present.
‘So couldn’t this have waited, sir?’ said Cradock. ‘At least until after the raid?’
‘Don’t be silly,’ said Jago. ‘We can’t leave bodies lying around in the street.’49
Cradock wasn’t sure whether this was some kind of joke, so said nothing. He glanced to his left. Jago was staring ahead at the road, his face expressionless.
‘Left here,’ said Jago.
They turned into Crompton Street. Before they had gone fifty yards they found the road blocked by a collapsed building.
‘Turn back, sir?’ said Cradock.
‘No,’ said Jago. ‘We’re only round the corner from where the boy said. We’ll walk.’
