SS-GB

‘And?’

‘Two rooms, and share a bathroom. Not bad really, considering the way things are. It’s a bit grubby but there is a lovely little inlaid desk and some pictures on the wall that look as though they are worth a bit of money. I mean, art and antiques are not in my line, sir, but these things are old-looking but in very good condition. And I think that’s usually a sign things are worth something.’

‘But he’s clean?’

‘Well I haven’t turned him over, sir. But he’s clean I’d say: clean but not kosher.’

This had become the English policeman’s way of describing offences to which he would turn a blind eye.

‘Stay there, Jimmy,’ said Douglas. ‘I’ll come over and have a look round myself.’

Chapter Ten (#ulink_ea7bc224-48ad-5f00-99a3-90a46cc30c87)

The top storey of the house had been burned out by incendiary bombs, and Douglas could see through empty spaces that had once been windows, to charred rafters crisscrossing the sky. The ground floor windows were boarded up, the high price of glass made that a common sight in this neighbourhood. The suspect’s rooms were on the second floor. Jimmy Dunn led the way.

He’d rightly described the furniture as valuable. There was enough in this room to keep a man for a decade, a choicer selection by far than the items for sale in the Shepherd Market antique shop.

‘Still no sign of the caretaker?’ said Douglas.

‘There’s a bottle of milk outside his door. Looks like he’s been out all night – missed curfew and stayed overnight perhaps.’

‘Douglas nodded. Breaching German regulations –which required special permission for anyone, except the registered occupiers, to stay in a house overnight – was common enough.

‘Is there something funny about this place, Jimmy? Or am I just getting too old?’

‘In what way, sir?’

‘Valuable antiques in this room, and a cracked soap-holder in the bath; priceless carpet on the floor and dirty sheets on the bed.’

‘Perhaps he’s a miser, sir.’

‘Misers don’t buy soap at all,’ said Douglas. It was a silly answer but he knew this wasn’t the squalor of the niggard. ‘Smell the mothballs?’ Douglas got down on his hands and knees, and sniffed the carpet, but that had not been wrapped with mothballs. ‘It’s been in a storeroom,’ said Douglas, getting to his feet and brushing his hands to remove the dust. ‘That would be my guess.’ Douglas began going through the small chest of drawers, turning over a few shirts and underclothes, most of them British army issue. ‘There must be something more personal here,’ said Douglas as he rummaged, ‘…ration books, discharge papers, pension book or something.’

‘A lot of people carry all those sort of things with them,’ said Dunn. ‘There’s so much housebreaking. And it takes so long to get papers replaced.’

‘And yet he leaves all these valuables, without even a decent lock on the door?’ Douglas opened the next drawer, and went through it carefully. ‘Ah! Now what’s this?’ Under the newspaper that lined the drawer, his fingers found an envelope. Inside it he found half-a-dozen photos; Spode’s parents standing in a suburban garden somewhere, with two young children. A child on a tricycle. ‘A man finds it difficult to throw these kind of souvenirs away, Jimmy,’ he told the Constable. ‘Even when his life is at stake, it’s difficult to throw away your family.’ The next photo depicted a bride and groom. It was a snapshot, slightly out of focus.

Douglas looked through all the pictures. The largest one was an old press-photo; sharp, contrasty, and well printed on glossy paper. It was of a group of laboratory workers, in white coats, standing round an elderly man. He turned the photo over to read the caption. Rubber stamps gave the date reference number and warned that the photo was the copyright of a picture agency. The tattered typewritten caption-paper said, ‘Today Professor Frick celebrated his seventieth birthday. With him at his laboratory were the team who worked with him when, last year, his experiments brought him worldwide acclaim. By bombarding uranium with neutrons to form barium and krypton gas, he proved previous theories about the disintegration of the uranium nucleus.’

It was hardly the stuff of which newspaper headlines are made. The names of the scientists were also listed. They were meaningless except for the names ‘Dr John Spode and Dr William Spode’. Douglas turned the photo over to study the faces of the men squinting into the sun on that peaceful day so long ago. ‘Is that our man?’ he asked Dunn.

‘Yes, sir,’ said Dunn. ‘That’s him all right.’

‘Christ! This one next to him is the dead man in that Shepherd Market murder!’

‘Shall I ask the photo agency if they have a record of anyone buying an extra print of this photo?’ said Dunn. ‘It’s been sent here to this address.’

‘It’s worth a go,’ said Douglas. He made another circuit of the room; walls, cupboard, floorboards, all without marks of recent disturbance. Nothing hidden in the cistern of the WC, only accumulated filth on the cupboard tops, and dust under the carpet.

Douglas looked at the big kitchen table that had been pushed into a corner to make more room. He felt underneath to be sure that nothing was hidden there by means of sticky tape. Then he knelt down and looked under it too. ‘Look at that, Jimmy,’ he said.

Like most kitchen tables it had a cutlery drawer, and this one was concealed by the way the table was pushed against the wall. Together they heaved the heavy table aside until there was enough room to open the drawer.

It was a big drawer. In it there were a few spoons and forks, and a broken egg beater, but occupying most of the space there was an arm. It was a right arm made of lightweight unpainted alloy that had come to pieces after a nut and bolt had loosened. Douglas knew exactly the part it needed, and, with the stagecraft of an amateur conjurer, he took it from his pocket and held it in place.

Dunn gave the low appreciative whistle that was obviously expected of him.

‘That’s enough for me,’ said Douglas. ‘That came from the scene of the murder. I wonder if it was loosened in a struggle?’

‘The Peter Thomas shooting?’

‘We can start calling it the William Spode shooting from now on, Jimmy.’ He put the piece back into his pocket and replaced the false arm in the drawer. There was a paper bag there too. He looked inside it and found a well-worn, but well-cared for, Leica camera. There were some accessories too; extension rings, filters, lens hoods and a set of four legs, tied together with string to which was also tied a large ringlike holder for them. ‘Worth a few pennies, that lot,’ said Douglas. They replaced the things and moved the table back against the wall.

‘Leica cameras have become a second currency,’ said Dunn. ‘I know a man who’s invested his life savings in a couple of dozen of them.’

‘Sounds like a dangerous investment,’ said Douglas.

‘But so is paper money,’ said Dunn. ‘So you think the dead man was misidentified?’

‘We’ll never prove it was deliberate,’ said Douglas. ‘They’ll all insist that they did it in good faith. But I’d bet my month’s tobacco ration that they were lying.’

‘Why, sir?’

‘Too many witnesses telling me the same thing, Jimmy.’

‘Perhaps because it was the truth, sir.’

‘The truth is never exactly the same thing,’ said Douglas. ‘You say this fellow Spode is at the school this afternoon?’

‘Should be,’ agreed Dunn. ‘Are we going round there?’

‘I’ll phone Central first,’ said Douglas. ‘I think my new boss will want to get into the act.’

Douglas Archer’s prediction proved correct. Standartenführer Huth, in the words of Harry Woods, provided ‘a typical example of SS bullshit’.

Chapter Eleven (#ulink_62e6f419-95db-5d32-b5d2-3cab1bbc303f)

Beech Road School was the same sort of grim Victorian fortress in which so many London children spent their days. On one side there was a semi-derelict church, a paved part of its graveyard provided the recreation yard for the school. What a place to consign a child to waste away a precious youth, thought Douglas. Poor little Douggie.

A teashop faced the school. In other times it had been a cosy little den, smelling of Woodbine cigarettes, buttered toast and condensed milk. Douglas remembered it from when he was a young detective, its counter buried under slabs of bread pudding; heavy as lead and dark as thunder. Now the tea-urn, its plating worn brassy, provided only ersatz tea, and there wasn’t enough warmth in the place to glaze its window with condensation.

‘We have four platoons of infantry in reserve,’ Huth told Douglas. ‘I’m keeping them out of sight. The rest of the men have the block surrounded.’ Douglas went to the door of the café and looked out. The men were in full combat order, from battle-smocks to stick grenades in the belt. There were lorries in Lisson Grove, and standing alongside them were the mass-arrest teams, complete with folding tables, portable typewriters and boxes of handcuffs.

Douglas knew that it was official German policy to make ‘the enforcement of law and order a demonstration of the resources available to the occupying power’ but he didn’t expect this.

‘You should have let me do this alone,’ Douglas told Huth.

‘I want to show these people that we mean business,’ he replied. ‘Let’s go and get him, shall we?’