No Human Enemy (Suzie Mountford Mysteries) (2 page)

They stayed for a cup of tea, Ross Gordon-Lowe constantly taking surreptitious peeps at his watch, which made Suzie angry. Her friend Shirley Cox, woman police sergeant in the Reserve Squad, had recently had an affair with a married man. ‘Thing that really narks me is after we’ve done it he keeps sneaking peeps at his watch,’ she said. ‘Like he can’t wait to get home.’

They stayed for a cup of tea – the Galloping Major only drank half – then both Tommy and Suzie helped get Jim down to the car.

Helen shot her eyes towards Ross and hissed at Suzie, ‘Try to understand, darling. He gets petrol for being a warden. Has to keep his end up.’

Suzie thought she’d like to keep his end up, but didn’t specify where. She hadn’t completely forgiven her mother for marrying him so quickly following the tragedy of her father’s death in an unnecessary road accident. Hardly a week went by when she didn’t think of that terrible day, even though she now knew the other things, that her dad hadn’t left them well provided for which was why Helen had married the artful Gordon-Lowe. The thought of it made her shudder.

They’d just got back into the flat when the telephone started to ring – Tommy’s special phone that rang when people asked for, or dialled, his home number in Earls Court.

He spoke for some five minutes and came out to find Suzie making more tea in the kitchen.

‘Don’t make yourself too comfortable, heart, we’re in work.’

‘Lift that barge, tote that bail. Where to this time?’

‘Odd one. Don’t know really. One of those V-1s this morning. Uncovered something, Billy says. Local law wants us over there.’ He looked puzzled. ‘Brian’s picking us up. Told him to bring Ron and your friend Shirley.’

Billy was Billy Mulligan, Tommy’s executive sergeant, cooked the books, kept track of time and motion. Brian was Tommy’s driver, rumoured to have worked at Kingscote for Tommy before he was even a detective, let alone a detective chief super. Ron was DS Ron Worrall, good at crime scenes and taking the snaps, and Shirley Cox was, well, Shirley Cox, old chum from her days in Camford Hill nick.

‘Bet Emma’ll insist on coming along for the ride.’ She gave him a sideways look and began to perk up her lipstick.

‘Shouldn’t wonder,’ Tommy gave what they called his terrible smile.

Emma was WDS Emma Penticost – their second attempt to replace the irreplaceable Molly Abelard now gone to glory and much missed.

*   *   *

Suzie later maintained that, for her, this was the worst year of the war, eclipsing even the horrors of the Blitz in ’40 and ’41. D-Day, 6
th
June 1944, came and went – the largest invasion force in history jumping the English Channel in an attempt to drive the Nazi occupation forces out of Europe. With it there was a sense of euphoria. They had waited since 1940 to return to the Continent, and once the Allied armies gained a toe-hold in Normandy people wrongly imagined that everything would be downhill to victory.

Exactly a week after the D-Day landings came the secret weapons: the V-weapons, the vengeance weapons, which could not, at first sight, be stopped. It was the beginning of a period which to the war-weary inhabitants of southern England was psychologically much worse than the days of the Blitz.

The code word for a flying bomb was
Diver;
for a rocket it was
Big Ben.
They were a major secret in 1944 Britain. The general public didn’t have a clue and it was not thought advisable to warn them of the horrible surprise, but word had been dribbling in from occupied Europe since the summer of 1943, and members of the underground resistance in France, together with the slave labour put to work on launch sites, had kept a steady stream of intelligence reaching the secret corridors of the Air Ministry and the War Office in London.

The Royal Observer Corps knew all about
Diver
and
Big Ben,
and on the night of 12
th
/13
th
June, just a week after the D-Day landings, Observers Woodland and Wraight at Observer Post Mike Two saw an object with flames spurting from its tail crossing the coast near Dymchurch, a couple of miles west of Folkestone. They later reported that it sounded like a Model T Ford negotiating a steep hill. On spotting it, Woodland lunged for the telephone linking them with their centre in Maidstone. ‘Mike Two – Diver, Diver, Diver!’ He shouted, then gave the course of this first flying bomb heading for London: the first Fiesler 103 to give its correct designation.

Observer Post Mike Two was suitably situated on top of a Martello Tower. Martello Towers are dotted along Britain’s south coast, originally erected as watch points for another possible invasion – the one planned by Napoleon Bonaparte in the early nineteenth century.

About five minutes later that first flying bomb’s engine stopped and it hurtled down to explode in an open field.

The second one to cross the coast that night – torpedo-shaped body with a ton of amatol in the nose, stubby wings and a pulse jet engine mounted at the rear above the tail – landed in a potato field, but the third exploded in Bethnal Green, taking out a railway bridge and two houses, killing six people including nineteen-year-old Ellen Woodcraft and her eight-month-old son, Tom.

So began the sinister and successful V-1 assault on the south of England. The man at the sharp end of the attack was Colonel Max Wachtel, a serious, no-nonsense former artillery officer, now the man in command of Flak Regiment 155(W). Wachtel had supervised the training of the launch crews: a tireless hands-on organiser who at one point was forced to grow a beard to disguise himself in an attempt to mislead the resistance organisations which had spies everywhere.

That first weekend of the V-weapons saw a steady stream of Fi 103s reaching the capital. St Mary Abbot’s hospital in Kensington was badly damaged, and there were incidents in Battersea, Wandsworth, Streatham and Putney.

On the Sunday came a horrific direct hit – at 11.20 a.m. a 103 struck the Guards Chapel of Wellington Barracks, a stone’s throw from Buckingham Palace, just as the congregation stood to sing the
Te Deum.
Fifty-eight civilians and sixty-three service personnel died and over seventy more were seriously injured.

Within three days of the first flying bombs 647 landed in the capital. Others were blown to pieces in the sky by the antiaircraft batteries ringing London, many were destroyed by fighter command aircraft, some were even deflected by pilots using a brave technique which called for fighters to manoeuvre their wingtips under the 103s stubby wings, so tipping the flying bombs onto a course away from their original targets.

The assault continued, night and day until the following year, though in September the V-1s were joined by the equally vicious V-2 rockets which came from the skies with no warning. The people of London and southern England who had been so defiant during the Blitz of the early forties, became nervous and fearful of the new threat: the psychological damage being as bad as the physical destruction.

Some five weeks later, on a Sunday morning, one of the flying bombs – now dubbed ‘doodlebugs’ – exploded near an Anglican convent in south London, an event inextricably linking the lives of Colonel Max Wachtel and Woman Detective Inspector Suzie Mountford: though it is doubtful if the colonel, commanding officer of Flak Regiment 155(W), ever knew.

CHAPTER TWO

‘So, where’re we going?’ she asked as they hustled down the stairs – couldn’t waste time waiting for the lift because Brian already had the car, the black Wolseley, waiting in front of the building.

‘Convent. Religious house. Like old times for you, heart.’ Tommy breathless, ought to take more exercise. In the car, Brian driving, Suzie in the back crammed between Shirley Cox and Ron Worrall.

Ron asked, ‘What’s going on, Chief?’ – They all called Tommy chief instead of the usual guv.

‘Three bodies, one wounded, result of enemy action.’ Tommy slewed himself around, looking straight at Ron who sat behind Brian. ‘One of this morning’s V-1s. Apparently one of them isn’t kosher.’

‘One of the V-1s?’ from Shirley, not paying attention.

‘One of the bodies, Shirl. Wake up. I’ve got no details except a part of the convent’s been seriously damaged and there are three fatalities.’

‘One of them not kosher,’ Suzie said, a bit cheeky.

‘Absolutely.’ Tommy paused, looked up at the mirror on the passenger side: he liked to have a mirror on the passenger side of his cars as well as the one normally placed for the driver. ‘That Emma?’ he asked and Brian lifted his hands off the wheel, making a little placating movement.

‘Yes, Chief,’ he nodded. Yes, it was Emma Penticost. ‘Said it was her duty to be with you. Following up in her own car.’

Tommy made a harrumphing noise. ‘Lucky to have her
own
car.’ Pause. ‘Takes it seriously, doesn’t she? Being my nanny. Full-time job, eh?’

It certainly is, Suzie thought, glancing back through the rear window to see the nose of Emma’s little black MG a few yards behind them, clinging on for dear life.

Brian drove fast, just within the limit, slipping neatly passed other cars as though trying to throw off a tail, giving them an occasional burst of the bell. All unmarked Metropolitan Police cars carried amplified electric bells to warn other drivers to keep their distance. Riding the ringer they called it and Brian was especially fond of using the bell. Sometimes he sang under his breath, ‘Ding-dong the witch is dead,’ from the Judy Garland film
The Wizard of Oz.
Suzie would sometimes look at Tommy and say, ‘Toto, I don’t think we’re in Kansas anymore.’

It took forty-two minutes to get there. Ten minutes to three on a warm, sunny Sunday afternoon in the middle of August, 1944.

The Anglican convent of St Catherine of Siena lies between Silverhurst Road and Easter Park, taking up a huge slice of ground that once belonged to the Parish Church of St James, on the edge of the invisible frontier where Camberwell drains into Walworth.

Brian pulled over and they stopped, parking before the convent’s main entrance in Silverhurst Road, a big, smart signboard next to the door saying,
Convent of St Catherine of Siena, Teacher of the Faith.

Tommy coughed, ‘Here we are then. Holy, Holy, Holy. All the Holies. Let’s get cracking.’

‘Who’s meeting us here from the local nick?’ Suzie had spotted a figure stepping towards them out of the shadow of the high grey wall into the blinding sunshine, reaching for the door on Tommy’s side.

‘According to Billy, their ranking plain-clothes officer. A DS, name of…’

‘… Magnus,’ she said, recognising him. ‘Philip Magnus. Pip Magnus. Watch him, Chief.’

Tommy nodded and opened his door before Pip Magnus got to it. Suzie slipped out and was on her feet by the time Tommy Livermore exited the car. Behind her Emma Penticost had parked her MG and now stood four paces behind the detective chief super’s left shoulder, a stunning athletic figure, prematurely ash-grey hair and that stance that would make even a jaywalker think twice. Emma, Tommy would say, was their secret weapon, their doodlebug, one of the very few police officers allowed to go armed. Certainly the only woman officer with that privilege.

Pip Magnus wore a grey double-breasted suit with fashionably wide lapels, the jacket a touch too tight, straining at the cross button, a grey trilby cocked to one side covering his thatch of straw-coloured hair, everything else in place: the thickset figure running to fat, rubbery lips and slightly bulging eyes, high colour in the cheeks. ‘Mr Livermore, sir. Good afternoon, we’re honoured, sir.’ Hand out, drawn back a little like the handle on a slot machine. ‘Detective Sergeant Magnus, sir. Pip Magnus.’

Tommy barely touched the hand, nodded and asked what it was all about and, as he did so, Magnus turned his head and saw Suzie. ‘Suzie!’ he said, registering a slight shock. and Tommy didn’t miss a beat.

‘WDI Mountford. You know each other?’

‘I’m sorry.’ Magnus hadn’t heard about her promotion. ‘Sorry, ma’am. Yes.
Knew
each other. Camford Hill. Lifetime ago. Met you there as well, sir. When you came over…’

‘Quite,’ Tommy said, ‘half a lifetime back.’ Suzie didn’t even open her mouth. Pip Magnus had been a close crony of DCI Tony ‘Big Toe’ Harvey, now in Wormwood Scrubs for being bent as a corkscrew. Suzie had served under Harvey and worked with Magnus when he was a detective constable. Slippery as the proverbial eel. ‘Might as well use grease instead of soap,’ someone had said of him.

‘Well?’ Tommy took a step past Magnus towards the convent door. ‘We going in among the holy ladies or not?’

Magnus put an arm out as though to bar his superior officer’s way. ‘No, sir. If you don’t mind … really I’d like to show you where the doodlebug came down. This way, sir,’ pointing towards Easter Park.

They could all see activity at the end of the road where it turned into Easter Park, with Easter Road running off to the right. Dust still hung in the air, vehicles were parked close to the wall and there was constant movement around what was obviously the incident.

Suzie glanced at the convent’s façade: dirty grey stone; three wide steps up to a solid, four-panelled oak door; three windows reaching away on either side, and three above on the second storey with an extra one above the door, the windows set into pointed arches and barred with grilles let into the stonework. Above the façade there were five stone decorative gables, the middle one containing a statue of St Catherine standing in a tall niche looking down benignly from the roof, a book open in her hand, the other raised in benediction.

Giving us her blessing, Suzie reckoned.

Away to the right a wall swept to the natural end of the road, slightly lower than the façade around the main door, all finished in the same way, big grey blocks of stone now blackened by the soot and dirt of London. You could always smell the soot in London and taste it at the back of your throat. Suzie knew that if she was put down blindfold in a London street she’d know immediately that she was in Britain’s capital. Nowadays you often smelt burning, and when it rained the scent of charred wood usually hung in the air, a legacy of the Blitz of 1940/41. As for the dust, there was plenty in London these days, dust laid in former centuries now unsealed by explosions and again brought to light. Dust that had been laid four or five hundred years ago was now the dust and grit of the 1940s.