SS-GB (13 page)

‘We heard you are leaving the Yard, and going on some special job for the Herberts.’

‘I’m sorry to disappoint you,’ said Douglas, ‘but as far as I know, I’ll be around for a little while yet.’ Douglas sipped some of the drink. ‘Very nice, Arthur.’

‘Well, drink up,’ said Arthur. ‘It’s a short life.’

‘You seem to be in high spirits,’ said Douglas.

‘No,’ said Arthur. ‘I’m in tobacco. Scotch-Johnny is in spirits.’ The villains all laughed and Bertha cackled. Even Douglas smiled.

‘I can’t believe you made that up, Arthur,’ said Douglas.

‘Now don’t be a bloody misery, Superintendent. We’ve all had a nice day – and strictly legit, too.’

‘Good health,’ said Douglas and drank.

‘Now that’s more like the Superintendent Archer I used to know,’ said Arthur. They all drank. Behind the cash register Bertha lifted her glass too, holding it to her lips, and tasting only the edge of it, the way people do when they live amid alcohol.

‘How much did you win, Arthur? I never thought of you as a man interested in the horses.’

‘And you were right, Superintendent. We went out there today to see some old pals, and have a flutter on the geegees, but what I won didn’t even pay for the taxi.’ Arthur drank in that agitated way that indicated that he’d not yet finished talking. ‘My old Mum – God bless her, and keep her – always says horse sense is the thing that prevents horses betting on people – get it?’

‘Your old Mum sounds like a bit of a comic,’ said Douglas affably.

‘You met her,’ said Arthur. ‘You met her, Superintendent. Here at Bertha’s; Christmas Eve 1938. She thinks the world of you. You bought her a port and lemon, and told her that I was an honest hardworking lad, who’d got mixed up with the wrong sort of people.’ Arthur laughed strenuously enough to spill champagne on Douglas’s sleeve. He mopped it up, still laughing. ‘Here, my sincere apologies, Superintendent. Have a little more. It’s the real thing – from France.’

‘As opposed to all that French champagne you make in that basement you rent in Fulham.’

‘Now, now, now, Superintendent – fair do’s all round, eh? Every man to his trade. I don’t tell you how to nick villains.’

‘If you didn’t win money on the horses, what are you celebrating? Where did the money come from?’

Arthur noticed more spots of champagne on Douglas’s sleeve. He took the silk handkerchief from his top pocket, and dabbed at it. ‘Legit, Superintendent,’ said Arthur. ‘Strictly legitimate. You know Sydney Garin?’

‘Everyone knows him,’ said Douglas. ‘The little Armenian art dealer.’

‘Little
German
art dealer now,’ Arthur corrected him. ‘Graf von Garin, the famous expert on Aryan art.’ They laughed. As if in response, Arthur poured more champagne for them all. ‘Well, Garin has gone into partnership with Peter Shetland, who became the Duke of something when his father died last year. You know him, Superintendent; Peter Shetland: tall, skinny kid, used to drink here at Bertha’s from time to time.’

‘I know him,’ said Douglas.

‘Peter Shetland – with a monocle now…’ Arthur pulled a face, ‘…is very well in with the Herberts. Those squareheads like a bit of class! With Sydney Garin as the brains, and Peter as the frontman, they are doing nicely.’

‘At what?’

‘They sell paintings and art treasures to the Germans and they sell
for
them too. When one of the top Nazis pinches some altarpiece from a cathedral in Poland, it’s Garin who goes to Switzerland or New York, and acts as agent to put it on to the market without too many questions about where it
came from. They’re in the money, those two. I mean, some of these paintings sell for a hundred thousand pounds – and they take a nice agency fee, you can imagine.’

‘I can,’ said Douglas.

‘They keep the stuff in Peter Shetland’s mansion house out in the country – near Newmarket. It’s a bloody great place, Elizabeth slept there, and all that kind of cobblers. They take the Herberts down there for a weekend of hunting, shooting and fishing, and sell them stuff by the cartload.’

‘I still don’t understand how you come into it,’ said Douglas. ‘And how I come to be enjoying this splendid champagne?’

‘You’ve got a touch of class, governor, have I told you that before?’

‘Not as far as I recall, Arthur,’ Douglas said. ‘I can remember you shouting that you were going to do me, from the dock, when you went down for that three-stretch for grievous bodily harm against the bookmaker.’

‘Natural exuberance,’ said Arthur modestly. ‘I was just a young lad in those days, Superintendent. No, as I say, you’ve got class. If I had you fronting for me – and keeping me out of trouble with the law – I could really make my business go.’

Douglas ignored this invitation to be corrupted. ‘And you’ve sold champagne to Sydney Garin?’

‘Have I sold them champagne! No less than fifty cases of it. Tonight they are having the biggest damned celebration this town has seen all summer. You go along to Portman Square tonight, Superintendent, and you’ll clear up half the unsolved crime in London.’

‘I might do that,’ said Douglas. ‘Will you be there?’

‘Give over!’ said Arthur. ‘I’m what they call
“trade”. They wouldn’t let me in the front door, not even to collect the money they owed me for the champers.’

Impulsively Douglas said, ‘And is that where Peter Thomas got the antiques for his shop?’

Arthur went over to the bar, got a packet of cigarettes, then came back to resume the conversation. ‘You’re joking, Superintendent. There’s no Peter Thomas, surely you know that? And our Sydney doesn’t deal in that kind of stuff. Garin and Shetland are fine-art dealers, they buy and sell museum pieces.’

‘And Peter Thomas?’

‘Peter Thomas never did exist. Peter Thomas is just a front for the Resistance. They used that shop as a way of handling money, and paying people, and so on. Sometimes well-wishers gave them antiques to sell for the cause.’ He turned and caught the eye of a stern-faced Bertha. ‘It’s all done with now, Bertha, can’t be no harm in telling about something that’s finished and done with.’

‘So who was the dead man?’ said Douglas. ‘You seem to know all about it.’

‘I know only what I hear,’ admitted Arthur. He belched softly; he’d had too much to drink. ‘He was the elder of the Spode brothers; a scientist. Before the war he was involved with all this splitting-the-atom rigmarole. Quite a brainy bloke, I’m told.’

‘And he worked in the antique shop?’

‘Naw!’ said Arthur. ‘All those scientists were collared by the Herberts, five minutes after they got here; you know that, Superintendent. Some of them were taken off to work in Germany, some of them – like Spode – are working on secret weapons for the Herberts, here in England.’

‘Spode?’

‘Some big secret German army depot in Devon.
They’re trying to make some new sort of poison gas, I heard.’

‘Bringle Sands?’

‘Could be,’ said Arthur. ‘Here, drink up.’

Douglas continued his conversation with Arthur but it soon became clear that he knew nothing more, and what he did know was little more than gossip.

It was from the phone box at Bertha’s that Douglas phoned Sydney Garin at his big house in Portman Square. ‘Superintendent Archer,’ said Sydney Garin, as smooth as silk and twice as slippery. ‘What a truly amazing coincidence this is. Right there, on the table in front of me, as I talk, there is a one-pound packet of Ceylon tea that I was about to send to you. I know how much you enjoy a cup of the real thing, and it would be no use giving this to people who might put milk and sugar into it.’ His speech was careful and slightly accented.

‘Very kind of you to remember me, Mr Garin,’ said Douglas, ‘but you know how I feel about that sort of gift.’

‘Please don’t get the wrong idea, Superintendent,’ said Sydney Garin without faltering. ‘This is a personal present from the leader of this Indian trade delegation newly arrived in London. He’s given me a few packets to pass on to people who have the palate to appreciate it.’

‘Perhaps we could drink a cup together, Mr Garin.’

‘A pleasure doubled, Superintendent.’

‘I hear you are throwing a party tonight.’

‘A modest affair by pre-war standards,’ said Garin, ‘but I’ve been fortunate enough to stumble over some rather scarce food and drink.’

‘I’ve just been talking to one of the stumbling blocks,’ said Douglas. ‘Arthur the snout-king.’

‘Ah! Yes, very amusing, Superintendent. Arthur, yes,
what a splendid fellow. He’s been doing one or two errands for me.’ While they were talking Douglas could hear a voice in the background. He recognized it as the carefully modulated tone of Peter Shetland, who, having finally read the name Archer scrawled on the desk blotter by Sydney Garin, said, ‘What the hell does he want?’

But Sydney Garin had survived too many life and death situations not to know when to bow to the inevitable. ‘Look here, Douglas,’ he said, having successfully searched his memory for the policeman’s first name, ‘why not come over here this evening and see for yourself? You’ll meet some delightful people and some of your superiors from Scotland Yard.’

‘Well that sounds like a very mixed collection,’ said Douglas.

‘You will have your little joke, Douglas,’ Sydney Garin laughed. ‘Ha, ha. But will you be able to come?’

‘I hate to disappoint you, Mr Garin,’ said Douglas, ‘but yes I will. It sounds as if you’ll need someone to keep an eye on the diamond tiaras.’

‘You can’t work twenty-four hours a day, Superintendent.’

‘I wish you’d explain that to my boss,’ said Douglas.

‘And who’s that?’ said Sydney Garin, all ready for another joke.

‘SS-Standartenführer Dr Oskar Huth,’ said Douglas.

‘People will start arriving about eight-thirty,’ said Garin, all amusement gone from his voice. ‘Black tie of course.’

‘Or uniform?’

‘Or uniform, Superintendent, yes, that’s a good joke. But I must go now;
à tout à l’heure.’

‘Arrivederci
, Mr Garin,’ said Douglas.

While the
Tatler
and
Queen
and other high-society gravure magazines were showing how Britain’s nobility and country gentry were celebrating their weddings and twenty-first birthdays with toasted cheese snacks and home-made beer, a new class of men had emerged from the wreckage of defeat. Shetland, the hard-eyed aristocrat, and Sydney Garin, one-time Armenian, typified the emergent super-rich. And so did their guest list.

‘Good evening, Mr Garin. Good evening, Mrs Garin.’

Garin’s wife – a mousy little woman with a bodice full of diamonds and pearls, and tight wavy hair – smiled as if pleased to be noticed. Their son was there too smiling dutifully at each new arrival.

It was to be expected that the Germans would be here; Generals and Admirals and men from the tiny civil administration which – under the command of the military Commander-in-Chief – controlled occupied Britain. And there were Englishmen: Members of Parliament and members of the puppet government who had learned to play their role in the new Nazi super-state that covered most of Europe. The Prime Minister sent his regrets; he was addressing a gathering of German schoolteachers.

Here too were the men of Whitehall; top-ranking bureaucrats whose departments continued to run as smoothly under the German flag as they had under conservative and socialist governments. There were nobility too, placed in the guest list with that seemingly
artless skill that a gardener uses with a few blooms that flower in the heart of winter; nobility from Poland, France and Italy as well as the homegrown variety. And always there were businessmen; individuals who could get you a thousand pairs of rubber boots, or a hundred kilometres of electrified fencing; three crosses and nine long nails.

It was like half-awakening from some terrible nightmare, thought Douglas. The long dresses of fine silks and hand embroidery, the carefully tailored evening suits of the men, and the impeccable clothes of the waiters, came as a shock after the cruel and cynical mood of defeat that prevailed beyond those wrought-iron gates and well-kept gravel drive, and the neat lawn that was shiny and pink in the last evening light.

And the voices were different too; quick-witted responses and relaxed movements in these large, warm and comfortable rooms were quite unlike the hushed voices and furtive movements that had become a standard part of British life. But more than anything else Douglas was surprised by the light; there was so much of it and every room was the same. Rich golden light picked out the superb mouldings, the marble mantelpieces and Adam furniture, glittered in the cut-glass chandeliers, and shone through the bubbles in the endless champagne.

It was a magnificent house, comparable with Portman House round the corner, containing enough beautiful things to be a museum. And like a museum it was crowded with such objects, so that they were too close together, as if in some monstrous competition of the absolute.

At the far end of the ballroom, through two smaller reception rooms, and beyond the folding doors with sixteenth-century flower paintings on the panels, there were spotlights. There, mounted on a specially
constructed platform – discreetly clothed in red velvet – was a small fifteenth-century Flemish diptych that Sydney Garin had purchased in Geneva. For this one evening only it was on display for the private pleasure of Garin’s invited guests. Tomorrow it was to be crated for delivery to Reichsmarschall Göring’s art gallery at Karinhall. In exchange, Garin and Shetland had accepted eight ‘decadent’ surrealist paintings that Göring had confiscated from non-Aryan owners.

Around the ballroom there were little groups of middle-ranking German officers, self-conscious in their uniforms and awkward in their lack of English language. Here and there some self-appointed spokesman fronted each group, behaving like some travel courier guarding a bunch of elderly tourists. There were high-ranking officers, elderly self-assured men with closely cut grey hair and sometimes monocles, wearing the gold insignia of Admirals on their white mess jackets, or the wide red trouser-stripe that denotes the General. Some were accompanied by personal interpreters in the special Sonderführer uniform.