Beware This Boy (38 page)

Tyler was upon him. Just as Wolf had swung at him, so now he whipped the bucket down on the other man’s head as hard as he could. Wolfsiewicz collapsed and was still.

Tyler picked up the package and carried it to one of the buckets of water that lined the room. His wrist dripped blood behind him.

The bomb in the change room exploded.

Tyler was awakened by a man’s voice shouting in his ear.

“Inspector? Tom? Are you awake?”

He opened his eyes. He seemed to be in bed. A hospital bed by the feel of it. Lev Kaplan was leaning over him.

“Thank God you’re still in the land of the living, Tom, old chap. I wasn’t sure for a minute. You look like Marley’s ghost with that bandage.”

Tyler opened his mouth to answer but an excruciating stab of pain shot through his jaw. He got out some guttural noises.

Lev understood. “Don’t try to talk. The doctor put some contraption in your mouth to keep your jaw immobile, but we need to debrief. Perhaps you could wag your finger, once for yes, twice for no. Okay?”

Tyler lifted his heavily bandaged arm, which also hurt. He wagged his finger once.

“Great. In case you’re wondering, when we got you out of the factory you were unconscious and you had a wicked gash on your arm and a broken jaw. Chopin was also senseless, but I guess he was the one who did that before you clobbered him. Am I right?”

Tyler indicated yes.

“Cardiff’s bomb did go off.”

Tyler pointed. The American’s arm was in a sling.

Lev shook his head. “I wasn’t hurt by that. My shoulder’s dislocated. I tripped just before we could nab him, so I wasn’t in the direct line of the blast. Cardiff was killed. He went for the bomb he’d planted in the men’s change room. It exploded in his hands. God knows what he was planning to do. Save or destroy?”

Tyler managed to mutter, “Eager? Is he all right?”

“He is. The Welshman absorbed the full force. Your poor constable got splattered with guts and gore but other than that he was unhurt. He’s been hanging out in the corridor waiting
for you to come to.” Kaplan hesitated. “Your wife hasn’t yet been told you were injured. I thought you’d be the one to decide what to tell her when you were more able.”

Tyler made noises of agreement.

“Thanks to you, Tom, the whole factory didn’t go up and everybody got out in time. The bomb in the boiler room would have done immense damage. I understand you dropped the damn thing in a bucket of water.”

“Mm-hm.”

“By the way, I had a bit of a natter with our mutual friend Mr. Grey, and he’d like us to keep everything low-key. No sense in frightening people with stories of what a close call it was. The official word will be that there were fifth columnists working in the factory but they’ve been apprehended.” He smiled. “You’re going to get all the glory. I shall remain in the background, just a lowly photographer who came to help. Not that I won’t accept hugs and kisses if offered. Not from you, don’t worry. I was thinking of somebody with a softer cheek.”

Tyler twirled his finger indicating Lev should continue. The American’s expression grew serious.

“The cell I was attempting to infiltrate is no longer. The head man had obviously decided it was safer to silence erstwhile allies. The body of Comrade Arnold was found in his house, minus a leg, I might add. It wasn’t Jerry that dropped the bomb on him. That was delivered by hand. Seriously injured his parents, who lived upstairs. They claim they didn’t know what he was up to. Thought he was working for the government and they were proud of him.” Lev fished in his pocket and took out a package of cigarettes. “Want one? They’re American.”

Tyler gave a one-fingered wag.

Lev lit up and put the cigarette between Tyler’s lips. Drawing on the fag hurt like hell but Tyler didn’t care. Lev waited for a moment for him to exhale.

“There was a parcel waiting for me at my hotel,” he continued. “God help us, it was a dud, but I would have opened it, expecting it to be a food parcel from home.” He glanced at Tyler. “Okay so far? Want another puff?”

Tyler wagged his finger. Lev helped him with the cigarette.

“As I was saying, the commie cell is no longer. Bolton’s dead of course, Cardiff and Arnold all mincemeat. Comrade Chopin is also a goner.”

Tyler struggled to sit up in the bed, but Lev pushed him back gently.

“Calm down, Tom, you’ll hurt yourself. No, you didn’t kill him. He was carted off to the station unconscious but alive. We discovered later he had a cyanide pill in a hollow tooth. When he came to, he bit on it. Pouf. Gone in seconds.”

Tyler made noises.

“I know what you mean, Tom. Poor benighted soul that he was.” Kaplan offered the cigarette again but Tyler declined. Lev smoked it himself. “One of the women from the factory, Mary Ringwald-Brown, committed suicide.”

Tyler groaned.

“She hung herself from the light fixture in her room. Her landlady found her early this morning.”

“Leave a note?” Tyler managed to croak out.

“Not just a note, a veritable tome, apparently. Inspector Mason filled me in. She actually addressed the letter to you but we thought you wouldn’t mind if we read it.”

Tyler tried to nod but thought better of it. “What say?”

“Nothing much really, if you strip away all the cant. She was sorry for what she did. She didn’t mean to hurt anybody. What was she referring to? According to our guttersnipe, Bolton, Comrade Chopin was the one who sabotaged the pots.”

“Locked doors to change room. Set tragedy in motion.”

“Did she do it of her own accord or do you think she was following instructions from our very own Comrade Patrick?”

“Not sure. Certain suicide?”

“Looks like it, but we can make doubly sure if you want us to?”

Tyler wagged his finger.

Lev stubbed out his cigarette. “The real trouble is we haven’t caught Comrade Patrick and that, frankly, scares the bejesus out of me. We’ve got to find him otherwise we’ve only scotched the snake not killed it, as the Bard put it. I understand you’ve got your lad, Eager, going through employee files. I’ve asked Inspector Mason to assign some constables to help. That’s one way we might be able to trace him. I’m betting he worked at the factory. I might be good with invisible ink and codes and all that stuff but I think good old-fashioned police know-how is called for here.”

Another wag from Tyler. Lev grinned. “I see you agree.” He stood up. “I’m going to let you get some rest, Tom. I’ll be back later.”

Tyler mimed writing.

“You want some paper? Hold on.” Kaplan reached in his pocket. “Oh, shoot, Tom, I almost forgot. There was a letter for you at the station.” He handed it to Tyler, who scrutinized it briefly, turned it over, and indicated to Kaplan he needed a pencil. Hastily, the American fished one out of his pocket and Tyler managed to scribble a few lines on the back of the envelope.

Kaplan read what he’d written. “
Mary’s house. See Merrick
. You think we should go and have a look there?”

“Yes.”

“I’ll go over right now – I assume Merrick’s another lodger. I’ll take your constable with me, he needs something to do.”

Tyler wagged an agreement.

Lev put the packet of cigarettes on the bedside table. “I’ve got it on the best authority that King George will be visiting the hospital tomorrow. You can offer him a good American cigarette. I hear he smokes like a chimney.”

Tyler made two wags.

“It’s true. It’s just not public knowledge.” He looked down at Tyler. “Hope your letter is good news, Tom. I see it’s postmarked Switzerland. Cheerio, as you Limeys say.” He left.

Tyler tore open the envelope. And it was good news.

Dear Tom. A very brief note to let you know I am finishing up a few loose ends here before I return to London. I shall be in touch as soon as I can. Yours, Clare
.

Tyler closed his eyes. Maybe it was the dulling effect of the morphine, but all he could really think of was his investigation. He knew he was useless at the moment, but he had no intention of lying around beyond tomorrow. He had work to do. As Kaplan had put it, good old-fashioned police work was called for if they were going to catch Comrade Patrick. Loose ends, indeed.

He pressed the note to his lips briefly, then he fell asleep.

M
R
. M
ERRICK DRESSED CAREFULLY, PUTTING ON HIS
navy blazer and sapper’s tie. He didn’t like having to talk to strangers, but he’d sat and pondered long enough. The information he had was very important.

Mr. Merrick had hardly exchanged more than a few words with Miss Ringwald-Brown since she had moved in. He thought she was toffee-nosed and couldn’t for the life of him understand why she was living in a flea pit like this. He had no choice, what with his paltry army pension, but he could tell she was well off. He was also quite aware she saw him as a nosy parker. In a manner of speaking, she was right. He took a certain pride in his own powers of observation, and living in the rooming house offered him a great deal of scope to practise. Take the red-headed man she’d led upstairs only yesterday. “The meter man,” she’d called him. As if he, Merrick, was a dumb idiot. The man wasn’t in uniform for one thing, and Merrick could tell just by the way he held himself he was a copper.

Same with the other lodger, the Chum, who lived in the house. Merrick had overheard Miss Ringwald-Brown use the word
comrade
when speaking to the new fellow, hence his own nickname Chum. The Chum had moved into the rooming house three months ago and had lost no time in getting in good with Miss Ringwald-Brown. He wasn’t from the same social class as her, Merrick knew that. The Chum had a lower class Brummie accent, very thick, nothing at all posh like hers. But Merrick had noticed that some women found the rougher
type of men attractive. And this man was rough all right. Fit and hard muscled. Sallow as an Arab.

Last night, Merrick had seen the Chum go up the stairs and he’d overheard voices, a lot of crying from her. It had been quite late when he’d heard the Chum leave again. Then, lo and behold, the poor woman had hung herself. The police and the ambulance men had come and gone but nobody had stirred in the room that the Chum occupied. Merrick assumed the Chum had gone to work before the catastrophe was discovered, but you never knew these days.

When things quieted down, Merrick decided he should check on the Chum, just in case he hadn’t gone to work, in case something else had happened. Merrick knocked and went inside. The door was locked but he had a key. He’d lived in the rooming house for a long time and the landlady trusted him to take care of small repairs if needed. He could come and go as he pleased. Merrick was respectful of other people’s property. He never ever took anything that wasn’t his. He was just curious, that’s all. How they lived, what they did.

He could tell at once that the lodger had fled. The room was tidy as a monk’s, and the Chum’s clothes were gone from the wardrobe. The dresser was empty. He’d taken his precious wireless with him. He liked to listen to it at all hours, Merrick knew that. The walls of the old house were paper thin.

Merrick returned to his own room, to think about what he ought to do. The more he sat and pondered, the more he came to believe he owed it to the Public Good to go to the police.

He checked his image in the spotty mirror and straightened his back. What he particularly wanted to tell the police was that the dead woman’s lover had been a soldier at one time. Not a soldier of the King, Merrick was sure of that. But a
soldier nonetheless. Unfortunately they might have a bit of trouble tracking him down because his name was as common as he was.

Smith. His name was Michael Smith.

This is a work of fiction based on fact. Endicott’s did not exist as I have depicted it, but similar factories did. Very soon after the outbreak of the Second World War, the British government commandeered factories throughout the country and adapted them for the making of munitions. The work was frequently dangerous and usually tedious, a combination that made matters doubly hazardous. The male population was diminished by the need for fighting men, and women were recruited to fill the gaps in the factories, on the buses, in the fields. Initially there was resistance to this shift in gender roles but eventually the women won respect. Only a die-hard stick-in-the-mud could ignore how essential this new labour force was to the war effort.

When peace finally arrived in 1945, most women returned to the life they had been living before the war – if they could. Returning soldiers had been guaranteed their old jobs, but the following years were ones of huge adjustment for everyone. The rigid class (and gender) divisions that had throttled British society had begun to dissolve. Once the bird is out of the cage, it isn’t easily put back. Eventually, a grocer’s daughter would become Prime Minister of Britain. Who’d ever have thought that possible in 1945?

If I have interested my readers in learning more about this amazing seismic shift in British society, I am satisfied.

The title of this book is from
A Christmas Carol
by Charles Dickens. When the Ghost of Christmas Present appears to
Ebenezer Scrooge, he reveals two wretched children who have been sheltering inside his robe. They are the children of Man, says the Spirit. “This boy is Ignorance. This girl is Want. Beware of both of them … but most of all beware this boy, for on his brow I see that written which is Doom unless the writing be erased.”

When I first read the story as a child, these words burned into my mind and ever since, the notions of ignorance, closed-mindedness, and fanaticism have been anathema to me. For example, against the war in the beginning, willing to foster acts of sabotage and dissent, the British Communist Party did a complete about-face after Hitler attacked Russia. The bad guys – the British and the Allies – became the good guys and the
BCP
became fervently pro-war. Of course, nobody was willing to admit that Joseph Stalin had already shown himself to be as terrible a tyrant and murderer as Hitler himself.

On the other hand, during this long season of darkness, there were many instances that revealed the astonishing fair-mindedness people are capable of.