Last Out From Roaring Water Bay (11 page)

“And this Squadron Leader Deveron, he also took the same route?”

“As I told you, young man, Deveron was Ralph’s escort. His job was to protect Ralph’s plane if he came under hostile fire, say from the submarines gun cannons or even a marauding German fighter. It was virtually impossible for a pilot to defend his craft and snap pictures at the same time. And even if the task of doing both was mastered, it didn’t make any difference to a converted reconnaissance plane because the craft didn’t carry any weapons.”

“So Craven wouldn’t have been able to defend himself if he came under attack?”

“That’s correct, young man; totally vulnerable. It took a brave man to fly photographic reconnaissance, especially on those lonely flights across Europe and into enemy territory. The Spitfire MK X1 had a Merlin 60 series engine. It was incredibly fast and powerful and speed was the essential defence for reconnaissance flights; speed and larger fuel tanks. Even then the power of the Merlin engine wasn’t fast enough with the excess weight the Spitfire carried. A directive came from the high command to strip the craft of every conceivable item the Spitfire didn’t need in order to achieve that excessive speed. All weapons, radio equipment, everything that wasn’t welded or bolted down was dismantled and disregarded. The Spitfire became a shell but a hell of a lot lighter and faster.”

“Would there be any reason for a third Spitfire to fly alongside Craven and Deveron?”

Josh bane frowned with my question. “I shouldn’t think so, young man. Not unless they’d defied orders. And may I add proudly, insubordination was rare to nonexistent in the RAF.”

I thought of what Billy Slade had told me. “Would this Deveron fellow be crazy enough to shoot down another Spitfire?”

“That’s a strange question. I suppose friendly fire has been known to occur on occasions. A plane gets caught in the crossfire. It can happen in an aerial fire-fight. But there was nothing in Deveron’s report suggesting that they’d experienced an enemy attack.”

He hadn’t clicked to what I was getting at. I took a deep breath, hoping that what I was about to reveal to him didn’t cause his heart to seize into a solid lump.

“No. I meant deliberately shoot another Spitfire from the sky.”

Josh Bane stared at me in astonishment, his mouth half open, his lips trembling as he tried to speak. He swallowed hard and said, “Are you implying that Deveron downed Ralph’s Spitfire on purpose?”

“It’s what I think happened out there on that fateful day.”

“Deveron left Ralph to die?”

“Crude I know.”

Josh Bane waved a hand in disgust. “Perish the thought!” He spat out angrily, glaring at me with the intention of throwing me out of his home, if he could have found the strength to do so. I wouldn’t have blamed him. He immediately appeared to me as being the British stiff upper lip type of guy. He never let the subject drop either and was straight back on the defence of his fellow airman.

“It’s a ludicrous assumption for a start. A man doesn’t become Chief Air Marshall Sir Dillon Deveron on the grounds of being a traitor and a murderer. He would never have got away with such cowardice.”

“What if he had got away with it, until now?”

“That’s preposterous and unthinkable.”

“What if it was proven?”

“I’d shoot the bugger myself. But things like that just didn’t happen during the war. Craven was the victim of circumstances beyond control.”

“Frigging right he was! Deveron shot him from the sky.”

“You have a vivid imagination, Mister Speed.”

“I have a reliable living witness who watched the entire sequence on that fateful day in 1944. The witness saw a Spitfire open its guns on another Spitfire. When the witness reported the incident it was dismissed as fantasy. Nobody followed up to check the story.” I considered it inadvisable to mention the mental state of my star attendee at the scene of the crime.

Josh Bane was in a state of shock. “No, no, it’s too incredible to comprehend. There has to be a mistake? Where was this person watching at the time?”

“Close enough to see the incident, but probably too far away to pinpoint exactly where the Spitfire crashed.”

“Then it’s possible the witness was mistaken.”

“The witness didn’t hesitate when describing the attack to me.”

“Why didn’t this person come forward at the time?”

“He was a kid and probably scared in case he received a clip around the ear for his troubles. Or he never really understood the consequences of what had happened at the time.”

“Deveron…shoots down Craven’s Spitfire?”

“Admittedly I’m not a hundred percent if this Deveron was the pilot responsible.”

Josh Bane shook his head at me in disgust. “I shouldn’t even be discussing the matter with you. Do you realize the consequences of such a treacherous act if it had been known at the time?”

“I think he would have been hanged for the crime,” I said, casually.

“Try hung, drawn and quartered, more like, and that would be from his fellow warriors at Duxford even before Deveron had got the chance to plead his innocence in a military court.” He calmed and sank in his chair, shaking his head in retrospect of what I’d told him. “It’s unthinkable. Why should Deveron want to commit such an awful act on a fellow brother in arms? It beggars belief.”

“The rumour of gold bullion sounds a feasible reason.”

“I can’t believe he would do such a despicable act on a myth?”

“Stranger things have happened.”

“Deveron fought hard for his country, not for self glory.”

“I don’t doubt that,” I said. “But even a myth can change the way a person thinks and acts.”

“Nobody could be sure if the gold even existed never mind if any was aboard the second I-52.”

“Deveron gambled with Craven’s life on the assumption there was gold. He shot Craven from the sky and concocted the story of losing sight of him.”

“He did loose sight of Craven. He reported having engine trouble and that Craven had continued on alone. And then there was confirmation that a lone Spitfire was spotted by a Home Guard observer between the Welsh and Scottish borders on the time and day stated.”

I paused for a few seconds to think it over. “So Craven obviously located the sub somewhere during his lone flight, snapped the photographs and on his return back to base, rendezvoused with Deveron. Somehow I think he told Deveron what he’d found and the rest is elusive history which only Deveron himself would have known.”

“Who’s to say that the submarine didn’t scarper to another destination after being spotted by Craven? That would be the logical thoughts of the submarine captain. It would make the death of Craven seem pointless.”

“Not really, the evidence was on film. The photo graphs I’ve shown you prove the submarine itself was in dire trouble; listing and on the verge of sinking. That submarine was going nowhere. Deveron must have known this too.”

“It doesn’t make sense, Mister Speed. Why would Deveron continue serving in the RAF after the war had finished if there was gold to be found?”

“That’s because the location of where the submarine was anchored was stored on Craven’s reconnaissance camera. Only Deveron couldn’t find Craven’s crashed Spitfire. The plane had buried itself two feet under the earth inside a gully. The summer grasses were high and easily camouflaged the craft. After the war in Europe it became a matter of time. Summers came and went, the plane lost forever. But that didn’t deter Deveron. Riches beyond belief drove him on in his pursuit. The search for the plane became his career. With every discovered crash site around the United Kingdom he could have monitored the situation; checked every missing craft as they were unearthed. His only problem was time itself. The search became years, a lifetime, in fact. Now that’s changed; the plane has been found, and let me tell you there are a lot of undesirables in hot pursuit to discover if the submarine really existed and are willing to kill for that information.”

Josh Bane absorbed what I’d said thoughtfully. “It’s a very scary situation you have fallen into, young man. It would be better to let the police handle the problem and safer for you. Perhaps you should report it to the Ministry of Defence?”

“I’ve already had a run in with some dodgy officials from the Ministry of Defence Police.”

“You can’t possibly manage the situation on your own.”

“I’ve no other choice.”

Josh Bane nodded but seemed genuinely concerned with my plight. Then we were back on the subject of Deveron. “Still,” he said, “I do find it rather difficult to imagine a man, Dillon Deveron’s age, would be running amok, killing innocent people for what I still believe to be nonexistent gold. Yes, the pictures you have do prove the existence of another submarine. It doesn’t prove there was gold bullion on board in 1944. Would you go on a killing spree on those pretences? Would you risk the probable wrath of British justice if you were wrong? Have the dishonour of such a cowardly act splattered over every newspaper in the country, your life in complete ruins. Would Deveron have risked all that? I certainly wouldn’t have.”

There seemed no point in me pressing on about whether Deveron was guilty or not. I felt as if I was heading in the right direction and I wasn’t going to be distracted by Josh Bane’s defence of the ‘stiff-upper-lip brigade’. Josh Bane had no chance of changing my mind. Yes, Deveron could be in the same position as Josh Bane and is probably scuttling around with the aid of a Zimmer frame. Hardly killer potential if that’s the case. But anyone can give orders or hire the right kind of villains. It would only take a phone call. No, I couldn’t excuse Deveron from guilt, at least not until I’d confirmed his innocence and that was very unlikely because Deveron was the last man to see Craven alive.

“Have you seen or heard of Deveron recently?” I asked.

Josh Bane was flabbergasted. “Surely you’re not thinking of asking him to his face if he’s a murderer?”

“The thought had crossed my mind.”

“Well I’m sorry but I can’t help you.”

“You won’t reveal where he might be just in case I upset his feelings?”

“Oh-no-no, I don’t even know where he is and neither do I know if he’s still alive. Yes, I’ve seen him on occasions many years ago attending the odd reunion and at Remembrance Day. As for his present whereabouts, I haven’t the foggiest.”

And that more or less ended my conversation with Josh Bane. I eased from the chair and stood, apologising for leaving. “I have to get back to London. You’ve been a tremendous help, Mister Bane and I appreciate the time you’ve given me. There’s no need for you to get up. I’ll see myself out.”

Josh Bane’s gaunt sunken face had me worried. I’d seen that type of expression before. That traumatized look of a man about to witness the imminent death of a condemned man. It sent a shiver down my spine.

“Take care, young man,” he said kindly. “Intuition tells me you’re turning over a barrowful of rotting maggots. Finding that submarine might favour your quest for the truth but it might also be your death warrant.”

“I’ll be fine,” I assured him.

“That might be so, young man. I only hope that when I pick up a morning newspaper in the future I’ll be reading about the greatest gold find ever, though I pray I don’t read your name in the obituaries column instead.”

I rather hoped he was joking, but I sensed he wasn’t. In the meantime what he had given me was a lead to the whereabouts of one elusive submarine, which without doubt, would stir interest among the natives, especially those I was after. What a perfect excuse to flush those cockroaches from their hiding hole with the faint whiff of gold in the air.

*

I headed back to London nursing an overactive mind, a bad headache and the bruises from my earlier clash at Duxford aerodrome, now beginning to remind me exactly where they were. And I was badly in need of sleep. Winston was already snoozing. Nothing seemed to stop the wretched hound from sleeping. He’d flaked out on the passenger seat the moment I turned the engine. I also made an astonishing discovery. I never realized dogs snored and farted when they slept and with such an annoying effect, which at least prompted me not to drop asleep while driving back down the motorway.

When I’d finally reached the dark street where I lived I came back alive and alert. I say
Dark Street
because none of the street lights were illuminated; the odd one extinguished sometimes but not usually all of them. The road was darker than the deepest depths of an abandoned coal mine. Not just that. None of my security lights came on as I swung the Roadster into my extensive driveway; they were definitely working yesterday. I immediately thought of a power-cut in the area but I’d noticed other houses in the vicinity still had electricity on. My suspicions of something more sinister were confirmed in the blink of an eye. And considering there was no breeze that evening, I could have sworn the shrubbery to my right began to move as I drove up to my garage door.

The bushes had stopped moving by the time I switched off the engine and stepped from the Roadster. I didn’t require psychic powers to know that I had hostile company. Winston had already indicated trouble when he shot out from the car to be by my side. The dog was agitated but controlled and neither did he bark or growl. He waited patiently. I think his intention was to allow the danger to come out into the open. The dog obviously knew more than I did because the ploy worked and out from the shadows of the shrubbery stepped two beady-eyed vultures. I knew them as Filbert and his bogyman minder, alias the two fraud ministry policemen.

The pair approached me with a quick pace. They failed to notice Winston tucked in behind my left leg. Any anxiety I had when I got out of the Roadster had dispersed the moment I prepared myself for the inevitable attack.

“You’re frigging trespassing!” I said, assertively. “So you’d better get your skinny arses off my property before the police arrive.”

They were impervious to my threats; cold blooded killers usually are when they know differently. I heard the double click a second after I felt Winston’s body tense against my leg. Although no switchblades were shown or swished in a frantic arc of rage as they neared, the distinct positioning of their hands hanging limply by their sides told me all I needed to know.