The Best of British Crime omnibus (2 page)

After the war he turned to full-time writing of detective and adventure novels and produced more than forty-five books. His work was serialized, televised, broadcast, filmed and translated into some twenty languages. He is noted for his varied and unusual backgrounds – which have included Russia, newspaper offices, the West Indies, ocean sailing, the Australian outback, politics, mountaineering and forestry – and for never repeating a plot.

Paul Winterton was a founder member and first joint secretary of the Crime Writers' Association.

There's something about the very thought of Moscow that makes my skin prickle. It's very little to do with politics; it's a personal and professional thing. All the frustration and bitterness and fascination of the years I spent in that city during the war – and, indeed, earlier – come rushing back at me, as overwhelming as a tidal bore. So that when my editor asked me, at the beginning of 1951, if I would be willing to return there for a short time and collect material on some of the changes that had taken place, I was temporarily knocked off balance. In the end, of course, curiosity won – that, and a sentimental urge to revisit the source of so many vivid and poignant memories. I said I'd go.

The main hurdle to be taken was the visa. Since the war the U.S.S.R had been particularly sticky about letting in people who knew the country, unless they were likely to prove useful spokesmen in the outside world afterwards. Even then, the mesh was fine. However, the Russians are incalculable people, and to my surprise my permit came through in less than a month. I took my old sheepskin
shuba
out of the trunk which it practically filled, and reminiscently caressed its stiff folds. Moth-balls rattled to the floor as I drew from one of the pockets the caracal hat with the earflaps which had been singed on an underground stove near Stalingrad when the temperature outside had been thirty-seven below. I couldn't help feeling excited.

By the middle of February I was away. I flew first to Berlin, where there was a little office business to transact with Barnes, our resident correspondent. By the time that was finished, a wave of blizzards had begun to sweep across Eastern Europe and the Met. Forecasts were hopeless. I soon got tired of making abortive trips to the airport and decided to go on by train. This was the signal for Barnes to throw a tremendous party ‘in my memory' – he seemed to think that war was inevitable and that the balloon was likely to go up at any moment. Those of the party who were capable of it came to see me on to the train, where I settled down in a
wagon-lit
of ancient vintage to sleep off the effects of Barnes's hospitality.

The train got stuck in a drift for five hours somewhere west of Poznan, but otherwise the first part of the journey was uneventful. The carriage was warm, the food in the dining-car was passable, and I had plenty to read. There was a mere handful of passengers to be examined at the Oder frontier and the Poles didn't seem very interested in my luggage. We made good progress after that, with no more drifts. At about eleven on the following morning we rumbled into Warsaw – and that was where the fun began.

Even before the train stopped it was apparent that something out of the ordinary was afoot. A brass band was playing
Auld Lang Syne
very loudly and inaccurately, and a substantial part of Warsaw's population, including regiments of children, seemed to have been marshalled on to the bleak, wind-swept platform. They stood in orderly files behind a screen of security police, stamping their feet to keep warm, and holding aloft red banners inscribed with such slogans as ‘The Peoples' Democracies Strive for Peace' and ‘Ban the Atom Bomb!' At the point where the sleeping-car had come to a halt, a space had been cleared. In this privileged arena stood a nonchalant group of about half a dozen Red Army officers, squat, short-necked figures in heavy grey overcoats. A little removed from them, a much larger group of civilian and military Poles conversed with eight people whose bizarre winter clothes and outlandish collection of hats stamped them unmistakably as foreigners. There was a good deal of noisy laughter and back-slapping, and from this air of exaggerated
bonhomie
I judged that an important delegation was being seen off to Moscow. It was only when I went to the carriage door and heard the booming tones of the delegation's leader that I realised what I'd run into. Once heard, that rich, round voice was unforgettable. This must be the Rev Andrew Mullett's ‘peace' delegation from England – one of the most publicised of the many ‘representative' delegations that were beating up support for Russia's international politics at that time.

I went back to my compartment rather gloomily, wiped the steamed-up window, and settled down to watch the show. I'd never met Mullett personally, unless you can call covering one of his big post-war meetings an encounter, but I knew plenty about him by reputation. Everybody did – he'd taken good care of that. He'd started off, to the best of my recollection, as an elementary school-teacher somewhere in south-east London, and he'd had a spell as a lay-preacher before becoming a minister of one of the Free Churches. I suppose he'd always been fond of the sound of his own voice, particularly in places where people couldn't answer back. It had struck me at that meeting in the Albert Hall that his manner had perfectly combined the didacticism of the pedagogue with the professional unctuousness of the divine. His interest in Russia dated back to the late ‘twenties. He had got the idea then that the Soviet Union was the one country in the world where the Sermon on the Mount was being translated into practice, and he'd plugged that line ever since and made a lot of other people believe it too.

I didn't know who the other delegates were, and anyway, out there on the platform in their concealing fur and sheepskin they were practically indistinguishable from each other. Two of the eight looked as though they might have been women and one of the women, who was wearing a bright imitation leopard-skin coat, looked as though she might have partaken too freely of Polish hospitality. Unless that jig she was doing was to keep her toes warm!

After a while there was a tactful toot from the engine, and the Red Army officers boarded the train. There was a great deal of handshaking on the platform, and porters hurriedly finished stowing luggage under the supervision of a little Pole with a red rosette in the lapel of his overcoat. Someone planted a microphone in front of Mullett and he delivered a last-minute message in English to his uncomprehending but enthusiastic audience. As soon as he'd finished, the band struck up
Auld Lang Syne
once more in a different key and Mullett began to shepherd his flock into the coach. I heard the little Pole apologising because there wasn't a separate compartment for each delegate – the result, I gathered, of the Red Army's unexpected incursion. Mullett said it didn't matter in the least and that he'd arrange everything, and for the next few minutes he fussed up and down the corridor as though he were allocating seats in the Kingdom of Heaven. Presently the engine gave another toot; there was a burst of cheering from the platform, the woman in the leopard skin shrieked. ‘Good-bye, tovarich,' from the door, the little Pole stood back with a rather weary smile, and we drew slowly out of the station to a crescendo of brass.

There was a good deal of coming and going in the corridor as the delegates sorted themselves out. My compartment was at the extreme end of the coach so I wasn't well-placed to see who was who, but from time to time I caught some choice fragments of conversation.

‘It's intolerable that I should be expected to sleep with that odious woman,' an affected female voice complained. ‘I can't think why they had to bring her. Listen to her now!'

There was a pause for listening. The ‘odious woman' was crooning to herself in the drawn-out, maudlin accents of the comfortably intoxicated. A man with a musical baritone voice laughed tolerantly. ‘It
is
trying for you,' he agreed. ‘She's not a bad soul at heart, though.'

‘I think she's quite insufferable. She's loud and vulgar and ignorant.' The Kensington tones had become distinctly chilly.

‘You're sisters under the skin, don't forget,' the man teased.

‘Nonsense!'

There was another pause, and then Mullett's voice boomed along the carriage. ‘If you like to bring your Russian grammar now, Cressey, we can resume our studies.'

The ‘sister-under-the-skin' man muttered ‘Pompous ass!' For a peace-loving delegation, I reflected, they seemed to be getting off to a fine start.

There was a last, agonised wail from the singer, and then all was quiet. The voices faded away along the corridor. I turned to the window and for a while sat watching the battered suburbs of Warsaw sliding past. ‘One of the loveliest cities in Europe,' I'd been told before my first visit there. I remembered how I'd stood on one of the Vistula bridges – it must have been around 1930, when I was
en route
for Russia for the first time – and thought how right the verdict had been. Well, the place hadn't much beauty now.

I picked up a book. Presently someone sauntered past my door, came back to take a second look, and stopped with an exclamation of surprise. ‘Surely it's George Verney?' It was the man I'd heard talking in the corridor.

For a moment I couldn't place him. He was a tall, wide-shouldered fellow in his early thirties, very good-looking in a dramatic way, with curling black hair, dark intense eyes, and a sensuous, mobile mouth. I knew that I'd seen him before, and I groped in my memory for time and place.

‘Islwyn Thomas,' he said, helping me out. ‘Don't you remember – the bad boy of the Military Mission?'

I did remember, then. I don't suppose I'd spoken to him more than a couple of times, but I clearly recalled the incident which had got him sent home in disgrace from Moscow. He'd been a passionate Welsh Nationalist – the sort of man who'd have gloried in pinching a Coronation Stone if there'd been a Welsh one to pinch. One day he'd got very tight on Welsh eloquence and Russian vodka and had socked a Brigadier who, he said, had insulted his country. He had given trouble before, I fancy, and that was considered the last straw.

‘What happened?' I asked. ‘Were you court-martialled?'

‘Yes, I most certainly was. I told the court I didn't recognise its jurisdiction – it was an English court, of course – but they gave me three months and reduced me to the ranks. It was the only kind of justice I expected.'

I hardly knew what to say. ‘What are you doing with this outfit. Are you hoping that Wales will be liberated by the Soviet Union?'

‘Perhaps. Wales certainly won't remain an English satellite much longer.'

‘You can't be serious!'

‘I was never more serious in my life.'

That turned out to be the truth. Thomas was as bitter about the remote conquest of Wales as a Dublin leader-writer about the iniquities of Cromwell. With a flash in his eyes he began declaiming about the Welsh national struggle, working himself up into a white heat by a process of spontaneous combustion, and sounding more and more Welsh as his periods lengthened and rolled. He was more than a romantic, he was a fanatical Anglophobe, and I was staggered that anyone could become so verbally violent with so little provocation. With his impetuous temperament I could almost visualise him starting a sort of Welsh ‘underground' in the hills. ‘The fact is,' he said, ‘that Soviet Russia is the only country that cares for the rights of small nations… '

It was too preposterous. I certainly wasn't going to get involved in an argument with him. He must have seen my hand groping for my book, for the torrent suddenly ceased. He gave a rather embarrassed laugh, and changed the subject.

‘Anyway, Verney,' he said, ‘what are you doing these days? Are you still with the Record?'

I told him I was.

His black eyebrows arched. ‘And the Russians have given you a visa? I thought all the correspondents who were in Moscow during the war were out of favour.'

‘Only those who wrote books about it when they got away. I didn't write a book.'

He chuckled, throwing his head back. He was given to rather theatrical gestures. ‘Did you want to go back, or is this just a job?'

‘A bit of both. I must say I'm looking forward to seeing Moscow again. I don't suppose it's changed a lot in six years, but some of the old things were pretty good … Lepeshinskaya at the Bolshoi; and boeuf Stroganov at the Aragvi, with a bottle of Mukuzani!'

‘You sound quite nostalgic.'

‘You can call it that. I always liked the people, you know. It's the tragedy of this century that we haven't been able to get together with them in a civilised way.'

‘No wonder they gave you a visa!'

‘For liking the Russian people? There's no visa-appeal in that. It can work the other way if you like them too much.' I took out my pipe and settled down more comfortably in the corner. ‘Tell me about this delegation of yours – who's on it? Anyone I'd know from the old days?'

‘I doubt it. Several of them were in Moscow during the war, but before your time, I think. You came in forty-three, didn't you? Let's see, now – there's Mullett, of course.'

‘The pompous ass? Yes, I know about him.'

Thomas shot me a quick glance, and then grinned. ‘So he is. I can't stand that over-bearing manner. Well, then, there's Robson Bolting, the Labour M.P for Longside – have you met him?'

‘Not in the flesh,' I said. ‘I know him by reputation, of course.'

Robson Bolting, indeed, was almost as much publicised a figure as Mullett himself. I was a little vague about his personal background, but I had an idea that he'd been attached to the Moscow Embassy in some quite minor capacity during the early part of the war. In any case, about that time he'd caught the pro-Russian fever, and in the General Election of 1945 when people had believed that ‘Left could speak to Left' his attitude had helped to carry him into Parliament for what had always been regarded as a safe Tory seat. Since then he had become outstanding as a leader of a dangerous little group of ‘fellow-travellers.' Personally, I found his approach nauseating. He'd go out of his way to admit that Russia was by no means always right, yet on all practical issues he'd advocate the policies she favoured. He'd agree that the Russians had been ‘difficult,' but he'd somehow manage to leave the impression that the post-war breach had been our fault. He'd publicly regret Communist intolerance behind the Iron Curtain, but that wouldn't prevent him putting his name to telegrams of salutation and friendship on appropriate occasions. He'd hotly deny that he was a Communist, but he'd never mind appearing on the same platform as one. His attitude to the United States was the same as his attitude to Russia, but in reverse. He'd acknowledge that we owed something to America, praising with faint damns, but if an opportunity came to blacken her, he'd rush in with joy. He was either very clever or very naïve, and I didn't believe he was naïve. If, as seemed clear, the Russians were setting great store by Mullett's delegation, Bolting was an obvious choice.