Island Madness (31 page)

Sometimes the parties could be quite sedate. They all liked playing draughts and as often as not they’d have a small tournament with betting on the side; the girls would darn the men’s socks, play cards, sit on their knees, listening to their halting tales of home; maybe they’d sing songs, tune into the radio, spoon close up to distant band music, their arms around each other’s necks, lipstick and hair cream, lipstick and hair cream, shuffling past each other like strangers on a dance floor. Later, couple by couple, they’d slip into the tunnel to make love, but by curious convention, when it came to Elspeth and the Lieutenant’s turn, the others would troop out of the room altogether and wait in the gun room. Elspeth and the Lieutenant had business to discuss as well.

At other times, opening that hatch was like taking the top off a shaken bottle of pop. Then they did run riot, all bloody night. “Like being in a cage with wild animals,” Elspeth said with some sense of wounded awe, “you had to meet them halfway, just to survive.” Those were the nights of cheap brandy, of drinking contests and nude wrestling, of the girls marching up and down the corridor to the hoarse cheers of
linksrecht linksrecht linksrecht
, with army rifles slung across their bouncing breasts, standing to attention in mock parades before the boys took turns with each of them, on the bunk beds and in the gunner’s chair, even draped over the muzzle of the gun itself. Then came the photographs. Schade had started taking them eighteen months back, just faces at first, couples arm in arm; then the odd exposed moment caught unawares, a blouse half-pulled over a head, a giggling body hastily covered by a blanket, two pairs of bare feet, then as they tried to dig out of the pit of boredom, something more deliberate, more orchestrated. The men had stuck the more innocuous on the back of their cupboard door. Others they kept in their lockers. (They had burnt all of them in the black stove minutes after Ned and the Major had left that Sunday.) By early morning the party would have subsided and they’d all be sleeping, or if not sleeping, talking quietly, couples again, lying amongst the detritus of their energy, waiting for dawn, when the cargo boat from St Malo would appear, stopping off on its way to Peter Port at the half-submerged jetty on the cove at Gull Bay where Schade and his bleary-eyed Kanoniers waited. The girls would be in the gun room then, wrapped up in greatcoats, watching those few wallowing minutes as the boys hauled the crates off the deck and dragged them up the steep path to one of the construction sites dotted along the cliff top, before the charged run back to the bunker, where the girls would squeal with the shock of freezing hands and wind-blown faces and one final copulation, taken quickly, as one might swallow a tot of rum. Then it was dressing and clearing up, the girls sweeping out and washing up and brushing down straw-infested blankets, while the Kanoniers, ever soldiers, tended to their uniforms and the mocked machinery of war. When the coast was clear the girls were helped up the ladder and gone, running across the scrub and down the hill to the safety of George’s sister. There they would change and wash and put on their working clothes which George had left there the night before and catch a bus for town. Their part was over until the next time.

“But why not ship the goods through the harbour?” Ned asked him. George was eager to take him into his confidence.

“Too risky, Mr Luscombe. Crates have a nasty habit of busting open and besides, they’re always having spot checks down there. But once you’ve got past, no one gives them a second glance.” His eyes glittered.

George came for the crates the same day. They were safe standing alongside the other requirements of his work. He’d load them on his van and take them back to the yard. Saturday morn-ing, alone, George would break them open. By the day’s close the goods would be safely stored in the bank vault under Smith Street.

It was a sweet, uncomplicated arrangement, a simple matter of barter, no different from the exchanges offered in the evening press. Everyone got paid in kind; the girls in parties and stockings and parcels of food; the Kanoniers in girls. The boat crew got a flat fee. Monty Freeman had been doubly fortunate, lured in by exhausting after-hours intercourse in the sanctity of his locked office, and later, as the business flourished, cash too. “He’s a dirty little bugger,” Elspeth said, forgetting the bank manager’s height, “insisted on wearing those rubber counting tips we use on his fingers, you know, to touch me privates with them,” but she kept him sweet nevertheless, for Monty had been important. Monty gave them the perfect hiding place. Monty watched his bank account swell. Monty sat Elspeth in his swivel chair, wriggled his fingers and cursed his spineless luck.

That last Thursday they’d had what was going to be the final shipment for a month. Schade was due to go on leave—to Cherbourg to drum up more business. The shipment was a special one. Something they had been waiting for for a long time. There was a coyness to George’s voice now, an almost childish quality.

“Special?” Ned asked. “How do you mean, special?”

George looked embarrassed. He looked back to his daughter, who shrugged her shoulders. “Custard,” he said.

Ned laughed.

“I know it sounds foolish, Mr Luscombe, but that’s what it was. One hundred and fifty tins of Bird’s powdered custard, left behind by the British Army. A hundred and fifty tins!”

“What’s so special about custard?” the Major asked.

“Three years ago,” George explained, “a tin of custard would cost you one and tuppence. Now we can get four pounds a tin. Four pounds! There’s any number of families prepared to pay that kind of money, no questions asked. Important families, pillars of the communiry. Think of it! One hundred and fifty tins at four pounds a tin, that’s…”

“Six hundred pounds,” said Ned quietly.

“Six hundred pounds! And all for a couple of hours’ work! Why, a fighter pilot only gets three hundred and fifty for the whole blinking year.”

It had come in on a flat sea and a rolling mist, the Kanoniers carrying it up the dripping path, while Elspeth and Schade made their goodbyes. It had been a long, boisterous evening, what with Schade going and the place in mothballs, too long and too boisterous, Elspeth had told him. Look, the boys could hardly carry it up the slope they were that drunk. They were getting out of hand, reckless. They didn’t seem to onderstand the need for caution any more. She was glad that this was going to be the last one for a while. It gave them all time to calm down, gave him time to put them straight. Schade had asked if he might come and see her before he left for the mainland, but she had said better not. It was clever, the way she’d kept the two halves apart. She didn’t want anyone to see her cosying up to a uniform.

George had collected the crate midmorning. There was no need to take it to the bank. He had customers signed up for practically every single tin. He stacked the crate up with the others behind the main gate, ready for Saturday. Saturday was not about sorting van Dielen’s weekly deliveries as he had claimed. He could do that Monday morning, before anyone came. But that Friday evening the foreigns broke in, turned the yard upside down. Crates half opened, shed broken into. Tommy Ie Coeur had found the fence smashed in around midnight. Saturday morning George appeared. He thought the custard had gone but he couldn’t be sure. There was too much mess about. He couldn’t look for it, not with the police stepping all over the place, asking daft questions, and certainly not later, when unexpectedly van Dielen turned up with his daughter, wringing his hands over the new roster. Major Ernst had shot the old timetable to pieces. George couldn’t understand it. Suddenly it was all hands to the tunnels and the fortifications up at L’Ancresse Bay. Didn’t make any sense to him.

“Do not worry about the tunnels,” Ned insisted. “Teil us about the yard. Teil us about Isobel.”

“Nothing to tell. She mooched about the yard while we were inside going through the orders.”

“I thought you told me she waited across the road.”

“She did for a time, then she got bored. Climbed up on the crates to get a bird’s-eye view of the harbour.”

“So she might have found the tins in one of the crates. She could have taken one.”

“It wasn’t there by then, I’m sure of it. They’d gone. Taken by the foreigns.”

“Or someone who knew they would be there.”

“No one knew, ‘cept Mr Freeman and Elspeth. Schade, of course. I couldn’t do nothing that day.”

“And on the Sunday?”

“I get there early and blow me if he isn’t there already. And then of course, when I hear about Miss Isobel, where she was found, like, I daren’t do nothing. Elspeth tries to get hold of Schade but he’s nowhere to be seen. Buggered off to the Continent. Monday morning when things are back to normal…”

“I see you breaking open crates.”

“That’s right. Well, they’d gone by then, that’s for sure. So I straightens the yard as best I can…”

“And in the following days scour the island for any sign of them.”

George nodded. “I was hoping if it were foreigns that maybe they’d dumped them, not knowing what to do with them, not realizing their real value. I mean, how many of those foreigns know what custard is?”

“There’s another way to look at it, George. That you saw her through the window that afternoon, saw her discover the crate. You had to silence her before she reported you to the police.” Ned didn’t believe it, but he said it all the same.

“I never, Mr Luscombe. I wouldn’t do that. And if I had I wouldn’t shove her down that bunker, now would I? Not bring attention to myself.”

“What was she wearing, that afternoon when she came round with her father?”

“Wearing. I don’t know, really I don’t. Trousers, I think.”

“Jodhpurs and a filthy old jacket,” Elspeth butted in. “Ponged to high heaven. I wouldn’t be seen dead in something like that.”

Ned leant forward. “You were at the yard too?”

Elspeth looked at her father. “At the house. She was with her dad. “Oh, hello, Elspeth,” she says, all sweet and smiling, “you’re looking well. Do you ever hear about that baby boy of yours?” looking down her nose as if she’s only ever opened her legs to catch an apple.” She looked Ned squarely in the face. “I told her where Dad was and went and had a lie down.”

“Proper shagged out she were,” George added helpfully.

They searched George’s house. Monty’s too. More food, more tobacco, a little extra cash. They took Mrs Poidevin in. She was mainly worried about her cat. Ned had taken it round to the whores next door. They seemed to like the idea. Mrs Freeman didn’t have a cat. Ned didn’t like to tell her, but he thought it very likely that before the year was out she wouldn’t have a husband either. At the end of the day the three inquisitors sat in Ned’s office, exhausted. Captain Zepernick brought a bottle of wine from the club, and sat on the edge of Ned’s desk, struggling with the cork. Ned was afraid the table was going to collapse before he managed it.

“So, it was smuggling,” the Captain said, finally raising his glass in a toast. “The eternal black market.”

“It is one of the worst crimes,” Lentsch countered. “It upsets the island’s balance.”

“Very serious.” Zepernick was smiling. “We have a new game now. Hunt the Custard!”

“It is not a joke, Captain.”

“No, no, of course it is not a joke. But it is not a tragedy either. It is not something that puts the island’s security in danger.”

Ned couldn’t resist putting his pennyworth in. “No? A bunch of local girls have punched a bloody great hole in it just by taking off their clothes!”

“Yes, but for stockings only!” He began to laugh. “It was a conspiracy of greed, not of insurrection. So—” he tipped up his glass—“I must go. I have another appointment.”

Ned and the Major waited while the Captain clattered down the stairs. They heard the burst of his engine as it sprang off down the road.

“Your Captain’s a character and no mistake,” Ned told the Major.

“I’d have thought he’d be spitting blood by now, seeing the mess they’ve made for him.”

“That is the Captain’s way, Inspector. He is like an animal—only one dimension—this is good, this is bad, I eat now, I fornicate now, I kill now. He has no real sense of time, of history. If he never saw me again he would not mind. He would forget me. And yet one day, if I came back, he would greet me like his greatest friend. And for Molly, poor Molly who thinks she has the measure of him, it will be the same.” He paused. “I have reports to write now, I think. Are we nearing the end to it, then?”

“You mean Isobel? I don’t know. Do you think she could have become involved in the black market?”

“Not possible.”

“Think about it. Thumbing her nose at us islanders by going out with you, getting one over on you by dabbling in the black market. The best of both worlds. Can’t you see her doing it? Not for the money. For the fun of it.”

“No.”

“She could have met up with Schade while you were away. He was quite a charmer, by all accounts.”

“No. I am sure she would not. Schade was not of her…”

“Don’t be afraid to say it, Major. Not her class? Neither was I. That’s why she liked me.”

“She had other reasons for that, I am sure. But even if she was involved in some way, or had found out, what George Poidevin said is true. The last thing any of them would do would be to tip her body in the very heart of the operations.”

She couldn’t tell Lentsch. She couldrit tell Lentsch. She had witten to him ‘cause she could not tell Lentsch
. Who would it harm. Her father? Her aunt? Who? Ned retraced his footsteps, trying to put the Major in the same frame of mind without rousing his suspicions.

“Let’s get back to your telephone call that Saturday. The one you made to her that afternoon. You said she was nervous, yes? You thought it was because of the party.”

“Yes. I was not supposed to know of it. I asked if I could see her that night and she said no. She found it difficult to keep a secret.”

“But Isobel had no difficulty in keeping secrets! She did it all the time with me, her aunt, her father, she loved it! She’d have been in her element leading you up the garden path for an hour or two.”