SS-GB (31 page)

‘If Colonel Mayhew returns, you’ll phone me immediately,’ said Douglas.

‘I will indeed, Superintendent,’ said the manservant. The two men both smiled and Douglas took his leave.

It was only when Douglas got back to Pip Piper’s darkroom, and put the strips of negatives on the lightbox, that his theories were confirmed. Here was frame after frame of closely typed calculations, some of them with scribbled annotation and changes. Pip remained well
back from the lightbox as Douglas leaned over it. ‘What do you think of them, Pip?’

‘About one stop overexposed, but that’s not a bad fault with this copying work. There will be no trouble reading it. Want a magnifying glass?’

Douglas took the glass and studied the negative. The words and figures were in focus and with this powerful glass there was no great difficulty in reading them. ‘It doesn’t mean a thing to me,’ said Douglas.

‘Don’t look at me,’ said Pip. ‘I was never much good at sums.’

‘Thank God that jazz band has stopped rehearsing,’ said Douglas. Why the devil doesn’t Huth guess that there are negatives, he thought. He was looking for carbon copies, and that would mean a search for something as large as a briefcase. But then he realized that Huth’s men had found nothing that would suggest the use of a camera. The only clue in the Shepherd Market flat was the position of the desk light and the bulb that had been removed from it. Douglas had replaced the bulb and moved the light’s position. Young Spode must have taken the special photo-flood bulb and thrown it away. As for Spode’s lodgings, the Leica camera and the bag of accessories had all been removed.

The rain had started again. Douglas stared out of the window at the hunchbacked roofs and crippled chimneys. The wind gusted enough to send a cloud of smoke to darken this dormer window. Douglas smelled the soot, and the dirt irritated his eyes.

‘Are you all right?’ said Pip.

‘Yes, I’m all right.’ Thoughtfully Douglas fingered the elbow pivot in his pocket. It had been modified to provide a secret chamber. The young Spode was obviously some kind of courier. This space was just big enough to take the 35mm film cassette but the
alteration deprived the fixture of a quarter of an inch of screw thread. It weakened its hold enough for a little extra exertion – shooting, or more probably turning over sheet after sheet of paper for the photography – to cause it to come loose. Well, people always made some mistake or other. ‘Pip,’ said Douglas, ‘there was a Leica camera, and four thin metal legs…’

‘A copying stand. Yes, that’s the simplest way to do a job like this. The legs screw into a heavy ring, and that clips to the lens mount. In that way the camera is held exactly the right distance away from the subject for the supplementary lens in use…focusing is extremely critical at such short distances –’

Douglas reached forward and touched his friend’s arm to cut the explanation short. ‘If you saw this copying stand and so on, Pip, would you know that it was intended for such work? Or could it be used for other purposes?’

‘No, you can’t use the copying stand and supplementary lens for any other purpose.’

‘I see,’ said Douglas. He turned back to the window. The electric kettle boiled. Pip made tea in a tiny red enamel teapot. It was strong tea, the strongest Douglas had tasted for a long time.

‘Are you sure you’re all right, Douglas?’

‘Why?’ said Douglas, still staring at rain hitting the wet slates. There was a curious feeling of isolation living up here where the only view was of the sky and other people’s rooftops. Douglas decided he liked it; it gave him a chance to catch his breath. Perhaps old Pip was luckier than he knew.

‘Well this is obviously something you want to keep to yourself,’ said Pip, ‘so it’s not a police matter. I know you too well to think that you’re on the take from one of the mobs. And that only leaves one thing.’

‘And what’s that?’ Douglas held tight to the cup of
tea so that it warmed the palms of his hands. He wished his father was alive. The memory came suddenly and without warning, as it had done at other crisis times in his life. He tried to dismiss the thought but it persisted.

‘You’re working against the bloody Herberts,’ said Pip softly.

‘I can smell more fog coming,’ said Douglas. ‘People are burning so much wood and rubbish to keep warm. That’s what does it.’

‘Tobacco you mean,’ said Pip. ‘I remember a time when only men smoked. Now I see kids and old ladies puffing away, even at the fantastic prices you have to pay for cigarettes.’

‘Solace,’ said Douglas. ‘People who are cold and wet and miserable get a lot of comfort from it.’ He could remember little else of his father, a huge man with a cheerful laugh, and clothes that always smelled of pipe tobacco.

‘But it’s the Herberts too. Every damn one of them seems to have a bloody great cigar in his mouth.’

‘The soldiers get harsh punishments for drunkenness,’ said Douglas. It was the sort of conversation he’d had before many times, and while he spoke his mind was partly occupied with the business of the film.

‘You are, aren’t you? You are working against the Herberts?’ Douglas didn’t reply. He craned his neck to see down into the street where a coalman was leaning forward slowly tilting a sack of coal over his shoulder so that the pieces crashed to the ground through the circular hole in the pavement, and into the coal cellar. In spite of the rain, the man and his sack disappeared behind a cloud of coal-dust. Douglas continued to watch.

Pip said, ‘You have it
your
way, Douglas. But your secrets are safe with me.’

Douglas shook his head. ‘No secret is safe with anyone.’ He kept going over and over the same thing in his mind. Huth’s ignorance he could understand. If Hesse, and the Abwehr people, had taken possession of young Spode’s Leica and the copying stand and the supplementary lens and so on, why didn’t they realize that the documents had been copied by photography? Why were they still asking Mayhew about papers? ‘It’s better you know as little as possible, Pip,’ Douglas told him. ‘If the worst comes to the worst tell them you developed a film for me. It’s easier for me to invent lies and excuses.’

‘I’ll just say I was drunk,’ said Pip.

And then suddenly it came to Douglas. The Abwehr were every bit as cunning and devious as any of the rest of them. They
did
know about the negatives – and that was why they were still talking to Mayhew – but by keeping it a secret they would be able to verify, to some extent, the bona fides of the other side. They’d talk to Mayhew, and anyone else about documents but they were waiting for someone to say the magic words ‘35mm film negatives’. Douglas drank the hot tea greedily. Then he switched off the lightbox, rolled the dried film back into a cassette and put it in his pocket.

‘Here, that’s the way to get scratches,’ objected his friend.

‘I’m not planning to do exhibition prints for the Royal Photographic Society exhibition,’ said Douglas, using a favourite remark of Pip’s. He drained his tea and put the cup on the window-ledge. ‘Thanks for everything, Pip.’ In the street below, the coalman had the circular cast-iron cover in his hand as he kicked the last few pieces of coal down into the dark cellar.

Londoners called it ‘the night of the buses’ but in fact the mass arrests and selective round ups, of people classified as IAa all the way to IIIEa, continued for two nights and well into the third day. As well as this, certain categories were ordered to report to the nearest police station. Posters and whole-page newspaper advertisements to this effect resulted in many people going voluntarily into custody.

Wembley Stadium was used as a holding centre for west London, and the Earls Court Exhibition Hall – with the Albert Hall as an overflow – was the place to which people arrested in east London were taken. The tenants of that vast riverside apartment block, Dolphin Square, were turned out into the streets, with only two hours’ notice, so that their flats could be used for hundreds of simultaneous interrogations.

To obtain interrogators every unit in Britain was scoured. As well as the professionals from the Geheime Feldpolizei units, SD men, Gestapo and people from the big Abwehr building in Exhibition Road, there were men with no other qualification than a working knowledge of the English language. These included waiters from the Luftwaffe Officers’ Club, two chaplains, a flautist from the German army’s London District symphony orchestra, seven telephonists and a naval dentist.

‘Keep the boys at home today, Mrs Sheenan,’ Douglas told her at breakfast, on the morning following the explosion. She put another slice of toast on his plate, and nodded to show that she’d heard him.
The bread was stale but covered with meat dripping it became a luxury beyond compare. Douglas waited to be sure there was enough for everyone before biting into it.

Mrs Sheenan poured more tea for all of them. ‘Did you hear the lorries last night?’ she said. ‘They must have been arresting people across the street. The noise they made! I thought they were going to break the door down.’

‘It’s going to be the biggest series of arrests I’ve heard of,’ said Douglas. ‘Perhaps the biggest in modern history.’ She raised her eyes to him. Awkwardly he added, ‘I’m not admiring it, Mrs Sheenan, I’m simply stating a fact. Thousands of people will be taken into custody. Goodness knows how the Germans will sort them all out.’

‘I can’t see how it will help them catch the men who planted that bomb at the cemetery.’

Douglas agreed but did not elaborate on it. He said, ‘And if you and the boys just happened to be walking along the wrong street at the wrong time, you could easily get caught up in the muddle. And who knows where you might end up.’

‘In Germany,’ said Mrs Sheenan. ‘Eat up your toast, boys, and drink that tea. We mustn’t waste anything.’

‘Yes, in Germany,’ said Douglas. That was where her husband had ended up.

‘Are you arresting them?’ said Mrs Sheenan’s son.

‘Don’t talk to Mr Archer like that,’ said Mrs Sheenan. ‘And don’t talk with your mouth full, I’ve told you before about that.’ She smacked the boy lightly on the arm. There was no force behind the blow but coming from such a mild-mannered woman the gesture surprised all of them. Her son sat back in the chair and cuddled his knees as tears came into his eyes.

‘No, it’s nothing to do with the CID, thank goodness,’ said Douglas, glad of the chance to disclaim all connection with it. He drank his tea. ‘I could give you something in writing, Mrs Sheenan,’ he offered. ‘It wouldn’t be official of course, but on Scotland Yard notepaper…something like that might be useful.’

She shook her head. Douglas guessed she had thought of that idea already. She leaned across to her son and kissed him. ‘Drink up your tea, that’s a good boy. It’s the last of the sugar ration until next week.’

She turned to Douglas and politely said, ‘What use would a piece of paper be to me? By the time I needed it, it would be too late…and suppose someone found it? They’d probably think I was –’ She stopped. She’d been about to say ‘informer’ but now she said, ‘…something to do with the Germans.’

‘Yes, of course,’ said Douglas stiffly.

‘Oh, I didn’t mean
that
, Mr Archer,’ she said. ‘You’re a policeman. You have to have dealings with them. What would we do if we didn’t have our own policemen? I’m always saying that.’

Douglas realized that she was often saying it because she was often trying to explain why she had a lodger who worked for the Huns. Douglas tucked the napkin into its wooden ring, and got up. ‘Leave the shopping for as long as you can – the baker’s man and the milkman call, don’t they? By the weekend the excitement might be dying down a bit. There simply won’t be anywhere to put the prisoners.’

She nodded, pleased that he’d not taken offence at the clumsy way she’d expressed herself. From the cupboard drawer she got a newly knitted pullover. It was white cable-stitch, with the colours of the police cricket club at the vee neck. It was wrapped in prewar tissue paper. ‘It’s cold,’ said Mrs Sheenan. ‘Winter has really begun now.’

She held out the pullover for Douglas but he hesitated before accepting it. He knew she’d knitted it for her husband – a noted slow bowler in the cricket team in those days before the war.

‘The post office won’t accept parcels containing clothes or food,’ she explained. ‘It’s a new regulation, and they always look inside every parcel.’ She opened the tissue and held the shining white pullover up. She was proud of the way she’d knitted it. ‘We both want you to have it, Mr Archer,’ she said, looking at her son. ‘You can always give it back when his father comes home.’

‘I’ll put it on right now,’ said Douglas. ‘Thank you.’

‘I never thought of you as a cricketing type,’ said Huth sarcastically as Douglas came into the office. The room was dark, the morning sky as hard and expressionless as gunmetal, and little daylight got through the heavily leaded windows. Huth was in uniform, his grey jacket over his chair-back, and his rumpled brown SS shirt loosened at the collar. He was unshaven and Douglas guessed that he’d been sitting here at his desk half the night. In front of him there was an empty bottle of Scotch whisky, and the air held the smell of dead cigars. ‘Shut the bloody door, can’t you.’

Douglas closed the door.

‘Pour yourself a drink.’ It was as if he’d lost track of time.

‘No thanks.’

‘It’s an order.’

‘The bottle’s empty.’

‘Plenty more in the cupboard.’

Douglas had never seen Huth in this sort of mood, or even thought it possible. He got another bottle of whisky from the cardboard box, ‘Specially bottled for the Wehrmacht’, opened it and poured a measure into
the tumbler that Huth produced from a drawer. ‘Water?’ said Huth and pushed a jug across his desk, carelessly enough to slop water over the muddle of papers there. Huth picked up one of them, a telex message, and let the water drip off the corner of it, giving it that childlike attention with which drunks survey their world. ‘Casualty lists,’ he explained, ‘they keep dying…’

‘The explosion?’

Huth waved the wet sheet of paper, with its closely printed list of names. ‘The explosion – that’s right! Dig up old Karl, after half a century in the phosphate-rich soil of north-west London, and don’t be surprised if he farts in your eye – right?’